Personally, I found the flowery nature of the piece nauseating. Some may enjoy it.




By Tristan Rutherford

Train carriages built in Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall are back in service in a corner of Southeast Asia.

Phnom Penh railway station radiates the ghosts of passengers past. It’s a gigantic white wedding cake, where signs in French point commuters to consignes and toilettes. The destinations listed above most of the ticket counters are optimistic. After dictator Pol Pot held court on the concourse in 1975, only a few lamentable ­carriages continued to totter around the network­ until 2002. Now a bugling peep from the platform edge suggests there’s a gentler revolution in train travel.

Two train sets painted with a thick shell of blue gloss twinkle in the afternoon sun. Like the SNCF Autotrain service carrying vehicle­s from Paris to Nice, here cars and scooters toot on to wagons to be pulled gently towards the sea. They recently carried a Rolls-Royce.

The passenger carriages were built in ­Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like renovated hotel guestrooms, each contains­ fitted carpets, air-conditioning units, ceiling spot lights and a Wi-Fi router. Our departure­ time is strictly adhered to; there are no other trains on the network. With a clickety­-click, we’re off. Our destination is the Cambodian Riviera. Although the French left Indochina in 1954, the country’s francophone elite continued to sip Sancerre on the shores of the Gulf of Thailand.

As this route hasn’t run for 14 years, it scythes through a cross-section of urban life like a clinking voyeur. It sees backyard ­barbecues, people doing dishes, make-ups, break-ups and dusty games of football. Then the wagons sway out of the city limits and pummel through jungle scrub.



Dusk brings a timeless portrait of Southeast Asia. Silhouetted palms and rice paddies glow ochre in the winnowing twilight. Calves run alongside our irregular service, while their mothers chew on with indifference. Rural life travels by bicycle, not car. Goods by tuk-tuk, not truck. When the train stops, all is silent. You can even open the carriage doors for added birdsong and monkey shrieks, then stay perched there as the train picks up pace and the 21st century is airbrushed away.

A plunging sunset offers a violent ball of red. Moments later, the tropical darkness herald­s dinner. We putter into Takeo station for fast food. Here that means chicken legs and boiled eggs with salt from a communal shaker. Plus river fish cooked over an open fire. There are tubes of potato chips, but only squid and berry flavours, with cheap cans of Angkor lager to accompany. I wash my hands in the spotless lavatory (serviettes utilisees) as the little train wanders into the humid night.

Old elites alighted at the colonial outpost of Kampot. Now the riverine town is a place where backpackers come to die. Silver-haired travellers who once ate apple pie in Afghan­istan can take an apartment, attend evening yoga or sip sunset G&Ts while reading Albert Camus, albeit on their Kindles.

The rococo riverside strip is charming. Under droning fans one can savour steak-frites­, play vingt-et-un or indulge in a massage­ for not much more than $10. It’s as if a French colonial settler could bluster in at any moment and sink a pastis. My destination the next morning is even more chic. In a ­return to the Swinging 60s, the reinstated train will also call at Kep-sur-Mer later this year, but until then it’s a 30-minute bus ride from Kampot. Before the Khmer Rouge, this beach town was Cambodia’s Deauville.

I hire a bicycle of the Parisian sit-up-and-beg variety for a tour. The ostentatious villas host more ghosts than Phnom Penh train station­. Derelict art-deco dreams gaze seaward like abandoned ocean liners. One has a rubber tree growing through the middle. A Nor­mandy chateau sits strafed but unbowed, fleur-de-lis ceramic borders guarding the overgrown perimeter. During Cambodia’s Golden Age, before King Sihanouk was exiled in 1970, a casino hosted games of chemin de fer.



Cambodia’s modern elite prefer Kep-sur-Mer. They crowd the blissful beach with its imported white sand. Many hit the seafood restaurants built on stilts over the emerald sea. Others recline inside the uniquely Kep invention of open-sided platforms, built seaside­ to catch the breeze, and rented by the day. Half the family can picnic on mats, while the rest doze in hammocks strung even higher above in a kind of duplex arrangement.

Scooter hire, dive schools and fried banana stalls usher in a new breed of tourist. The welcom­e memo was not read by a family of macaque monkeys. From the branche­s of a carob tree they lob seeds at nouveau­x riches applying sunscreen in an attemp­t to stay pale.

I ride the return boat to Rabbit Island. That’s a 30-minute splash through limpid sea with a family of queasy Cambodian land­lubbers. They are as pleased as I am to see the nodding palms and lines of hammocks along a stretch of golden sand. Snorkels are $US1 ($1.33) a day. A bungalow with a ceiling fan and mosquito net doesn’t cost much more. At 10pm the generator ceases, rendering the island­ as tranquil as a rural train stop.

The lights never went out at Ile des Ambassadeurs, King Sihanouk’s former private island, where feted nabobs were fed local crab and imported champagne. Nor does the partying­ stop at the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, a few kilometres away. C’est la vie.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/t ... 63894f277c

Yeah, that's a pretty annoying piece. The photo of the KR asshats reminded me of one of the books I've read on the wonderful contribution DK provided Cambodian history. Pol Pot really wanted the rail lines to remain operational and used them to transport PP residents into the countryside. What I found surprising is that in Battambang there was a large group of rail workers living there. They, and their families, were allowed to stay there and continue in their jobs. They were treated quite well compared to the rest of the population...for the most part. At least according to the author of the book anyhow.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 12:53 pm

After dictator Pol Pot held court on the concourse in 1975, only a few lamentable ­carriages continued to totter around the network­ until 2002.

This nonsense about the trains only running till 2002 has been repeated in many publications including TIME magazine. They were running till 2009 at least.


The photographer, Nhem En, says they were on a trip to Sihanoukville.

Well this one had stopped running way before then,, I took this pic outside the railway workshops in August 2006

Sorry it was August 2006 also these two blue ones that had replaced two old trains and several other old trains that were behind them . The price of steel was very high back in 2006.