(originally posted elsewhere Jan. 03, 2008)
Last night we were awakened by Papa at 2am. “Phsah Leu mien pleung!” he told me in simple Cambodian I could understand: the local market was burning. We could see the orange glow easily from our new balcony at the back of the house. It was a sickening sight even for me, whose connection with it is more tenuous than it is for others. Everyone does their shopping at Phsar Leu. Its 1800 stalls have sold everything from meat, fish and produce to dry goods, clothing and jewelry for decades. Now it’s gone
As we watched the glow Sopheak called a couple of her friends who have stalls there. One, a vegetable dealer, just burst into tears and couldn’t 
speak. Another, the proprietor of a jewelry stall, managed a few distraught sentences before she too became overcome with tears. Later we heard that another aquaintance walked to work as usual this morning and simply fainted when she saw the devastation.
Of course it was arson. The New Market is set to open in 2008 but has had trouble attracting stallholders. I’m not saying the owners are responsible for the fire. There are many other interested parties as well. They (whoever ‘they’ are) want to make the Phsah Leu site into the new bus station, while another ‘they’ want to build a multi-storey umarket shopping centre where the bus station currently stands. Any, all or none of them could be responsible. It’s pointless to speculate. I do know that the price of a stall in the New Market was $4000 a week ago. Today they’re asking $5500. I know this because we’ve been thinking about buying one. We’re not thinking about it anymore.
