Matt Walker, Laneways of Phnom Penh (TRAVEL 2026)

Phnom Penh reveals itself in the spaces most visitors never enter—backstreets and laneways that run behind the markets, where the real city persists. This is not a hidden world, just an overlooked one: the Phnom Penh of ageing colonial facades, their surfaces cracked and stained by decades of heat, monsoon rains, and neglect. Tangled electrical wiring binds the buildings together—improvised, unregulated, and accumulated over time—a visible record of survival in the absence of planning. Step further in and you encounter a tightly woven social fabric: street food vendors, coffee stalls, and narrow cafés furnished with plastic chairs. These are not temporary economies, despite how they are often dismissed. They are permanent adaptations—spaces marked by years of labour, where walls are darkened by cooking fires and daily life leaves its residue. This is the old Phnom Penh: informal, resilient, and intensely human.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.