You Can't See It All, But You Can Take It In: A Day on Foot in Phnom Penh

The next day I didn't have a plan, which is usually when I get the most out of a place. I just put on my shoes and went walking. No route, no list of must-sees, just me, the sidewalk, and a city I'd barely scratched the surface of.

Walking is how I get to know a new place. You miss everything from the back of a tuk-tuk. On foot you catch the small stuff: the smell of something grilling, a shopkeeper hosing down the pavement, the way one block flips from quiet to chaos and back again. Phnom Penh rewards that kind of aimless wandering.

I passed through a few of the local markets, including Kandal Market, with its big blue sign out front and a row of food carts and motorbikes parked underneath. These markets are the real engine of the city. Step inside one and you get the whole operation up close — glass cases packed with noodles, fresh herbs, dried fish, mystery cuts of meat, jars of chili and pickled everything stacked to the ceiling, a couple of fans pushing the warm air around. It's loud, it's crowded, and it's exactly the kind of place where the city actually lives.

At some point I ducked into a coffee shop to get out of the heat, and it turned out to be a good one. The place was full of fresh flowers — big bunches of pink roses everywhere you looked — and lined with shelves of those waving lucky cats, the ceramic ones with one paw up. Dozens of them, all sizes, all grinning at me while I drank my coffee. I'm not superstitious, but I figure a room with that many lucky cats can't hurt.

Later on, I headed up to the top of the hotel I was staying at. You can't beat a rooftop for getting the measure of a city. I grabbed the obligatory selfie up there — me in a red shirt, the whole skyline of Phnom Penh spread out behind me, the river off to one side and the high-rises catching the last of the evening light. Classic traveler shot. I'm not above it.

But the view that really got me wasn't the skyline. It was looking straight down over the market right next to the hotel. From up high you could see the whole thing laid out — block after block of patchwork tin roofs, blue and rust and silver, running off toward the towers in the distance. Down in the gaps between them, people were going about their business: vendors under umbrellas, motorbikes threading through, the slow churn of a market day from a few floors up.

That's the thing about a city like this. There's so much happening at once that you couldn't take it all in if you tried. Every street has its own thing going, every rooftop hides another little world. You can stand up there and look as long as you want and still only catch a sliver of it. You can never see it all. But you can stand still for a minute and appreciate it all, and honestly, that's the better deal anyway.

A good day. No agenda, a lot of walking, and a city that keeps unfolding the more I look at it.

More coming a little later on.