Cycling in Cambodia: what a bike trip to Phnom Penh’s newest tourist attraction reveals about how lives in the capital are changing

A bicycle ride in Cambodia is guaranteed to offer the following: waving children shouting hello, boys on bikes too big for them trying to race you, dusty tracks past dusty fields, and someone selling cold Coca Cola and Carabao from a large red cooler.

On a recent ride, however, anti-Covid-19 scarecrows – a traditional rural response to sickness, using old clothing stuffed with straw to resemble people (some even with plastic guns for extra menace) – hung outside houses to ward off the virus. The lack of face masks and social distancing, however, suggests the people in Cambodia do not feel too threatened.

Earlier this month, as my self-imposed isolation was coming to an end, I yearned to escape the four walls of my flat and once again see life outside Phnom Penh. A cycle ride from the heart of the capital, an ever-growing city of 2 million people, through its rural suburbs and eventually leaving the city behind would be the perfect opportunity to once again stretch my legs, get my too-clean bike dusty and explore the different sides of Cambodian life.

I decided to mark my first adventure out of the city in two months by cycling 20km (12 miles) to see the latest addition to Phnom Penh’s list of tourist attractions: the US$12 million Win-Win Memorial commemorating the actions (and myths) of Prime Minister Hun Sen – the man who finally brought an end to the murderous Khmer Rouge guerillas.

My journey to the memorial – located in the north of the city in what was formally dusty scrubland – starts from the grand Independence Monument in the city’s centre, which celebrates the end of Cambodia’s period of French colonial control in 1953. On the wide tree-lined boulevard, this area is home to some of the city’s greenest spaces (notably a low bar in Phnom Penh) and is also a snapshot of the internal and external powers that have shaped the country.