CAMBODIA (2011): PHNOM PENH

Compared to my first visit in 2004, the capital has lost its wild west quality. When I was teaching at the Royal University of Phnom Penh on a Fulbright in 2011, I experienced the city not as a tourist but as the Cambodians do. When you get off the main drag of renovated French colonial buildings, there is a whole city of modern architecture. In the 1960's the campus at RUPP was designed in large part by Vann Molyvann, the beginning of a new cosmopolitan age- delayed by the war and the Kmer Rouge era.