Royal Cinema, Kampot

The Royal Cinema in the small Cambodian town of Kampot was built during the first half of the 1950s. Whether it was before or after 1953, the year the country gained its independence from France, is unclear as both 1951 and 1955 have been suggested.

For twenty years or so the Royal's programme combined epic and musical Hindi films with martial art movies from Hong Kong, war movies from the Philippines with cowboys and Indians films from the US. However the Royal, like the three other cinemas of Kampot, shut its doors when the Khmer Rouge seized the town in April 1974. The Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979 after Vietnam invaded Cambodia but the cinema remained shut for several more years as the country became engulfed in a dramatic war between the occupying Vietnamese army and several resistance movements.
The Royal Cinema reopened in 1984 but closed down a few months later in 1986. It was then used to store water containers. However its story does not end there. In 2009 the Royal Cinema was "rediscovered" by US filmmaker and CamboFest founder/co-organizer Jason Rosette. The same year the family who lives within its walls agreed to allow the 3rd CamboFest Film and Video Festival to take place at the historic venue. Sadly it seems nothing has been shown since then, even if the rumour of a possible reopening of the Royal can sometimes be heard.

After 60 years of troubled history, the name of the cinema, in Khmer, has almost disappeared. I am not absolutely sure but I think it says "រាជរោងកុន".

រាជរោងកុន
[Royal Cinema]

More traces of painted signs can be seen on the formerly green panel to the left of the entrance.

Location: Kampot / Pictures taken in December 2011

Amateurs, Kampot

The small Cambodian town of Kampot, known around the world for its pepper, lies on the narrow coastal plain that stretches between the Gulf of Thailand and the Phnom-Damrei (Elephant Moutains). The town as it is at present owes much of its appearance to the French, who turned Kompong-Bay, a village largely populated by Chinese, into the administrative and commercial centre of the coastal region from the mid-1880s onward. In spite of the devastation brought about by the Cambodian civil war, the Khmer Rouge regime and the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, much of the colonial architecture survived. The majority of buildings are of the classic two-storey ‘Chinese shophouse’ design, with slight differences in façade styles. The twenty-seven built on the riverside in 1901 were among the first ones. Over the following years dozens more were constructed along the streets further away from the river.


Regardless of the particular design of the façade, some space was always available between the two floors for shopkeepers and tradesmen to paint the name and nature of their business. If the buildings are still standing, albeit sometimes in a dilapidated state, very few painted signs remain and those that do are very faded. One of the "best" preserved ones is this rather puzzling ghost sign written in French.

Amateurs agrandissement
These two words on their own clearly don't make any sense (agrandissement means enlargement). Since there is not enough space above or underneath, I suppose this ghost sign began on the façade to the left and extended to the one to the right. Unfortunately, as shown on the photo below, the former was completely rebuilt recently. As for the latter it still bears tiny traces of black paint but it is impossible to decipher anything at all. If I were to hazard a guess regarding the business advertised there, I would go for a photographer, who maybe also sold a couple of cameras to amateurs (given the limited solvable demand in town and the surrounding area, this can't have accounted for much)? Agrandissement can also be translated as expansion or extension but here I think it refers to photo enlargement.
Unless some old picture of the street emerges, I am afraid what the complete sign said will remain a mystery.


Location: Kampot / Pictures taken in December 2011

Bosch, Phnom Penh

The location of this painted sign will tell you why I didn't post anything over the past three weeks. Indeed I was travelling in Cambodia, where I came across a few painted signs. Most were modern ones, painted on metal sheets to signal repair shops, hairdresser saloons and the like. More interesting, from a historical perspective, were the very faded signs of businesses and shops painted on the façades of unrestored colonial buildings. These were written either in French or in Chinese (in the 18th and 19th centuries many Chinese migrated to Cambodia, where, until the Khmers Rouges seized power, they played an important role in commerce, banking and transport). Needless to say, given the destructive madness of the Khmers Rouges, there aren't many left. Those that survived were certainly already barely legible in 1975.
Yet today's sign is of a different nature and, actually, it is the only advert for a product painted on a wall I saw in three weeks. I spotted it while on my way from the train station to Psar Thmei, the Central Market (both are lovely Art Deco buildings). It promotes Bosch's thermo-elastic spark plug and was painted there certainly because many motorbikes, remorks (the local version of Thailand's tuk-tuks), taxis, and buses congregate around Psar Thmei.

The company founded by Robert Bosch in 1886 in Stuttgart patented the first spark plug in 1902. The particular model advertised here was launched in 1976.
According to the company's documents, Bosch first ventured in Cambodia via its power tools business division in 2004. The automotive aftermarket and security systems divisions followed one year later. Then in 2010 Bosch opened its first representative business in Phnom Penh. Was this sign painted in or after 2005? Parts of it do look relatively recent and given the high humidity levels in the capital for most of the year, one could expect it to look older than it actually is. However Bosch may have had a small presence in Cambodia for some years through its Thai subsidiary (Bosch has been present in Thailand since 1923).

Bosch
Thermo-elastic

Note the words "Bosch / Germany" on the body of the spark plug.

A few words in Khmer are written above the drawing but I really don't know what they say.

The lower part of the sign includes drawings of a boat engine as well as a whole series of road vehicles that could require Bosch's Thermo-elastic spark plug.

To conclude, I should mention that this painted sign also includes four Chinese characters, arranged vertically to the left of the spark and visible on the second picture. Judging by their darker colour and state of preservation, it seems they were painted at a later stage. Why they are so small is strange since there was quite a bit of space available.

Location: Street 118, Phnom Penh / Pictures taken in December 2011