When I first arrived in Phnom Penh around March 2014... (ten years after my first brief visit) ... being a bit unfamiliar with the city, I ended up staying a few days in the Orussey district... I wandered out to Tito boulevard in the evening. Then, there were several night-time sidewalk eateries and fruit shake shops set up right on the sidewalk... There was also a really busy Karaoke establishment for the local cops in full swing with plenty of big Japanese land cruisers parked out front. This was 2014...

However, only two nights ago, riding the passap to catch the late nite bus to Sihanoukville, the driver happened to ride along Tito Blvd on the way to the bus station...

My memory collided with what I saw! The street was dead empty. Gone were all the sidewalk eateries and fruit shake sellers. The one karaoke club along the way looked completely dead.

It struck me, the city by night has become a lot less of a city for street life...

Of course, there remain several pockets where you might find late night food sellers, and shake sellers... But the scale and numbers of ordinary people doing this type of business all around the city during the night seems to have dwindled sharply!

Of course, there is the post-Covid factor... But it is sad to see such a quiet night city full of empty streets...
Why?

Yes, you are right. May be that I was on the road a little too late at night.

...If you are riding around early Saturday evening, of course, the whole city is crawling with sidewalk life and cafes...

But it is the sense that the streets roll up later in the evening so that much of the city looks like a ghost town.

orichá wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2023 9:48 am Yes, you are right. May be that I was on the road a little too late at night.

...If you are riding around early Saturday evening, of course, the whole city is crawling with sidewalk life and cafes...

But it is the sense that the streets roll up later in the evening so that much of the city looks like a ghost town.

On the other hand, if you compare Phnom Penh streets at 6 o'clock in the morning with a lot of Western places at that time, it's a relative hive of activity. I think it's just that the "waking day" begins and finishes earlier here than most barang were used to back home.