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Walked past the FCC today and I see it is gutted out for a refurb. Any idea on when it is meant to be open again?

thanks.

One and a half year

Never fear, this wonderful neo-colonial delusion will be returning.

Fab, I can still go in there once a year pretending to be a seasoned French plantation owner just in from the bush, ostentatiously ordering the only good creme caramel in town (true, still) and being loudly insulting to all the savvy young sophisticated world travellers and wannabe anglo literary geniuses.

Tanya (the legend) and i did just that on the very last time we met.

Do they still drink Pink Gins in there - the poseurs?

Ah yes, the heady days of the early 50s when my grandfather ran a rubber plantation in Chhup and would amble down to the capital every weekend to sit drinking pastis on the FCC's veranda.
And then later on in the 70s with war looming, the journalists would sit on the balcony of the FCC and watch the Khmer Rouge positions across the river being bombed.
Only problem being that the place never existed till 1992-3.

But but i can still smell Sean Flynn's sweaty tee shirt..

And surely Somerset Maugham penned the first draft of "Of Human Bondage" sitting at the verandah, looking out at all the expats and their new g/f's promenading along the riverside boulevard..

Never liked FCC. I frequently went across the street to Touk though. Same views, less crowds, service better.

I could always get a seat at Touk overlooking the riverside.

I never liked it that much but it was for a long time one of the only nice places on the riverside. There's a pleasant ambience there with good views and a cool breeze blowing from the river. It has interesting historical photos on the walls and isn't hugely expensive. If any relative or friend is visiting for the first time it's on the list, there's nowhere quite like it even if the journalists abandoned it about 24 years ago.

I wrote it off after the service was absurdly terrible. Not the usual service of looking at their phones in the corner and you have to go get them, but just completely disappeared for a time. The views and the river breeze can be found at so many places like Touk which I mentioned, just not the historical appeal and photos though.

Seems it will be closed next time I am around anyway.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Mon Nov 25, 2019 12:09 am isn't hugely expensive

Really? Not sure what you're used to, but for the quality (or rather the lack of) you get at the FCC in Phnom Penh it's extremely overpriced.

IMO

GMJS-CEO wrote: ↑Mon Nov 25, 2019 1:50 am ... just not the historical appeal and photos though.

There's nothing very historical about it.