Word: phnom
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...rock gods must have been smiling when, in 2001, Zac and Ethan Holtzman met Chhom Nimol at a nightclub in Long Beach, California's Little Phnom Penh. Inspired by cassette tapes Ethan hauled home from a backpacking trip to Southeast Asia, the American brothers had set about the rather quixotic task of forming a Khmer rock band. They'd learned a couple of songs, but needed a singer to give them life. They found one that day in Chhom, a recent émigré with a knockout voice. Dengue Fever, that singular, strange and wonderful ensemble, was born...
...part ode, and an affectionate look at a band that straddles worlds. In front of a Cambodian crowd, Chhom, who spoke almost no English when she met the Holtzmans, is finally at home, while the band tags along, alien, outsized and bumbling good-naturedly through the simmering streets of Phnom Penh. Cross-cultural dimensions like this set the film apart from typically slick rock-doc fare...
Housed in a beautifully restored, 105-year-old building - complete with colorful tiled floors, carved screens and shutters, and a spectacular wood-beam roof - the Chinese House is the brainchild of Alexis de Suremain, a French expatriate who is also behind some of Phnom Penh's best boutique hotels (including the 20-room Pavilion, just 100 meters from the Royal Palace, and the new Blue Lime). The dramatic, lantern-lit and antique-strewn interior is home to a downstairs exhibition space and an upstairs lounge, where guests enjoy designer drinks and finger food. (See pictures of Shanghai...
...house when the Khmer Rouge seized power in the 1970s, but in 2007 the property was returned to family hands when it was purchased by one of Tan's descendants, who then leased it to de Suremain. This sort of happy ending is all too rare in Phnom Penh...
...flew into Phnom Penh International Airport and took a tuk-tuk (a motorized rickshaw) into town. It was a $5, 45-min., open-air trip on the highway, which probably did bad things to our lungs but helped ease my motion sickness from our wobbly descent to the airport. It also gave us a nice visual primer of the capital, which we were using only as a way station. Looking back, I would have liked at least another day in Phnom Penh to take in the culture - the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, for example - and the laid-back, late...