Phnom Penh Fading

Phnom Penh (formerly Pochentong) International Airport (Image Credit: Cambodia Airports)

Introduction 

The last moments that I ever saw Phnom Penh International Airports were understandably underwhelming. Not often are humans tasked with the feeling that an airport they are standing within would cease to be that. Moreover, I felt that this feeling of loss was ultimately surreal, incomparable to the greater losses and goodbyes that were set in this very perimeter of evolving walls and runways. On September 8th or 9th, Phnom Penh International Airport was closed, the ceasing of operations having been planned far in advance to exactly line up with the opening of Techo International Airport (IATA: KTI). I recall two moments, ironically both of arrival, in which the planned descent into disappearance was made evident. Upon my return after a brief visit to Australia I was lining up at the Cambodian passports gate. Most shocking was the length of the line for an automated smart gate that only needed to scan a passport and fingerprint. Leaning out revealed the clear answer that one of the machines had been blocked off, the airport staff stressing that it was only roughly twenty days until the airport’s closure. The other moment was when I was waiting to pick up some visitors. Slightly bored and rather filled up on photographic attempts to document the airport less than a week before it closed I felt like ice cream. But of course I should have known that everyone else would have been at least slightly conscious of this as when I tried to order I was informed that all the ice cream at Dairy Queen was out of stock in a planned phase out of ingredients in lieu of the closure. There were only hot dogs left. Dejected, I wandered back out into the open air arrivals hall, staring once again at the towering stone sculpture of Khmer mythological figures, arms extended as if to wind up for action as well as to escape the bumpy stone mass from which flowed mostly clear water. This statue had been there for who knows how long. I myself struggle to recall when this major renovation had been made. Almost as if for

the last time, in breaking out of the flowing water chopping up from the stone, these figures would finally be liberated from their static position and be free to ascend. For they were no longer needed as guardians for a place that would cease to have a single soul be sheltered under its structure. 

I will not detail the history of this airport, which in its roughly 65-year lifespan bore witness to such a significant portion of modern Cambodian history, practically its own history book written into the architectural and material fibre. This piece will be a reflection towards my loose memories of it and a pondering of what it may become. Significant moments or experiences that help to be fragments that serve as some kind of testament to its existence and service but also other perspectives I have had the 

pleasure or experience of seeing it through (whether from the past, present or even possible future). This piece will be but another piece of evidence to recognise and commemorate Phnom Penh International Airport, formerly known as Pochentong (International) Airport for the area in which it was based, and perhaps a goodbye letter to a now gone era. 

As Though Looking Through a Dusty Window Pane 

This line comes from the final text card that climactically ends Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece film In The Mood for Love (2000). The full card reads: “He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.” Perhaps most significant of all is that this ending sequence is opened by a documentary newsreel footage of Charles de Gaulle’s 1966 visit to Cambodia, specifically that of his arrival at Pochentong Airport with King Norodom Sihanouk, accompanied by his mother, to receive the French president. 

This moment from the film serves as one of the rare moments in which this airport was featured in a non-documentary work of film, instead the documentary is co-opted with the film to build the narrative, and most importantly understood the historicity that was to surround the airport. The scene in the film comes with the subtext of the mid-sixties, a raging Vietnam war and a feeling of slight hollowness of a bygone era. 

I watched this film for the first time in a theatre on the 9th of September, the day already mostly known to me with the sombre yet ultimately weightless knowledge and feeling of loss that symbolised the airport’s end. As I watched Tony Leung’s character then stand amid the ancient remains of Angkor Wat to whisper his secret in a hole while a young monk disciple watched I could not help but be moved. In some ways nobody, not really me nor Wong Kar-wai 25 years before, could have predicted that the currency and modernity of the times as it pertained to the story in the sixties with the airport would so easily begin to transition towards the latter setting of Angkorian remains and temples. Structures of a different bygone era. It serves as one of the great signifiers that the spirituality of buildings and structures are a character of their own, that settings themselves are alive in a different

way. And so it feels difficult to not think of this moment as the loss of a person, of something that could have remained but, due to circumstances that feel both internal and external, did not. To think that almost no other person would put foot to ground on those runways for some time is without a doubt historic. 

An Hopeful Future 

So what will become of the airport? Its perimeter, its walls and its works of art and stone? I am not exactly sure. An article by Prak Chan Thul on the Cambodian news site Kiripost, interviewing Chhang Youk, Director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, points towards possible military bases and cargo hubs with Youk himself downplaying the idea of the entire area of the airport itself being a museum. Whatever seems to be certain is that the current royal government of Cambodia is not interested in offering the space to private interest. Reportedly, according to a recent article by Sao Phal Niseiy, this time on Cambodianess, another Cambodian news site, there are plans to transition the area into a new green public space and park with only a part of it going towards a museum. While I perhaps would have preferred a massive museum for visitors to take in the whole structure and history which emanates from it, this is understandably a welcome move if it should come relatively smoothly. This at least has relieved my concerns and questions for why they could not have just had two airports running for more air travel capacity. 

The Final Goodbyes 

សំឡេងបមៀងមួយមុឺនអាល័យ ចមៀងចៀងថ្មីនិងកយបង្អស់ 

The sound echoing the song of ten thousand yearnings A new song is sung and after all the rest 

It was the end of two different summers which hit the hardest in terms of having to leave. The former was on my first trip out of Phnom Penh towards London. Rushed from the night before and uncertain about my arrival I braced within that golden hour moment of departure while listening to Sinn Sisamouth and Mao Sareth’s ភ្នំពេញកុងល្អ(Phnom Penh Krong La-or, transl. Phnom Penh Great City), a cover of the Japanese song 愛して愛して愛しちゃったのよ (Aishite Aishite Aishichattanoyo, transl. I Loved, Loved, Loved you), a song which so effortlessly delivered its love to a city I now saw so well from above, each building reducing itself to a familiar melange of greys, blues and reds. Another signifier of the history entering even my ears as my eyes rested upon this again. 

My other key departure was my final one. In the dark of night, more humid than usual to the point of clouding the car windows practically making any effort to photograph down the boulevard

which I resided so close to, that helped orient my home for so many, futile. The only thing that made it through were the lights of traffic and the airport, its sign now barely lit, even the circuits knew of their final days. With the remaining bits of public airport Wi-Fi, I had switched out my SIM at home in the 

trust of my grandma’s holding, I listened to មួយមឺនអាល័យ (Muy Mern Ahlai, transl. Ten Thousand Yearnings) by Sinn Sisamouth, his melancholic vocalising across time and space to me. After checking in and claiming the tax return for my ticket for the final time I looked up to see a TV displaying the airport’s own farewell (in Khmer, Chinese and English to my memory): 

“We’ve loved welcoming you to our airport in Phnom Penh for the last 30 years. From 9th September, all arrival and departure flights will be relocated to the new Techo International Airport. We will continue to serving [serve] you at our Sihanouk International Airport [Siem Reap’s airport] and at Techo International Airport” 

It is an interesting thought to think of these as the final words of a being that existed for no more than roughly 65-70 years, let alone a century. But perhaps it would be best to look at this in a more Buddhist light. Looking past all the duty free shelves stripped of products and left only with their shells of branding, discounting the souvenirs that would become different memories and witnessing once again the polished grey granite that tiled this airport so iconically, one can perhaps try to be comforted that the rebirth of this entity is going to happen with a relatively positive and peaceful direction. I think I will as well. But until that comes, and so long as the airport as it currently stands is closed off with razor wires and left buried and bare like a skeleton is a shell, I will continue to mourn the passing of an age, wrapped in both nostalgia and hope, a hope which at least will follow through far into Cambodia’s future. Much like the enchanted forests and long-standing temples that rest across the country, Phnom Penh will have itself another historical monument. One now trapped with but another mass of memories. 

“That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.” 

– Text card from In The Mood For Love (2000), Dir. Wong Kar-wai