Battambang by Night, January 27, 2020
Battambang is a beautiful city in Western Cambodia, once a stop on the railway to Thailand. It’s a treasure trove of Art Deco in its amazing Cambodian form. It’s a very safe place, very quiet at night, when the central streets transform into a stage-set with perfect lighting.
The Khmer, in my experience, do not go out at night so much. The old Frenchified district of Battambang is small, not more than forty blocks. Not many people live there. As everywhere in Cambodia, the relationship between the city and the population is not simple.
I was returning from dinner by the river, which is where the few locals who eat out go. The city was deserted. Or rather, I soon came to feel, it seemed prepared and ready for invisible inhabitants.
I realized that the city was inviting all night long, but only if you could walk through doors. Otherwise it was lonely. Battambang at night is lonelier than the villages around it.
The movie theatre, long shuttered, brooded over the main street like a temple from a former age. I love Cambodian Brutalism. Ironically, alone in its weak floodlights, the theatre looked like a projection.
It was not exactly a haunted space. It wasn’t creepy in any way. But it did have a carnival-at-night aspect, and that was creepy. I had gotten more familiar with rural Cambodia than before. Everything about the city seemed more artificial than before, and somehow shallower, exactly like a carnival.
I found a stray shelter, but for whom, or what? It wasn’t much of shelter. It was pretty old, though. When the rains came back, it wasn’t going to last. It was extremely beautiful.
Battambang at night is an artificial environment shaped with artificial light, but the effect is so thin. The crowd has gone, and the lights burn alone, as if the storefronts were shrines in themselves, which maybe they are. Which are the spirits drawn in like moths, to the brilliant blue of the Samsung sign?