“We fell in love with the place because it was a wooden, traditional Khmer house,” said Mrs. Hunter as she gazed out at their lush garden dotted with frangipani trees, sandstone boulders and orchids. “It makes you feel like you are in a sanctuary.
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 17:01:19 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/greathomesanddestinations/03gh-cambodia.html
Near Phnom Penh’s Hubbub, a Home Provides Calm and Savings
By SIMON MARKS
Published: June 2, 2009
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
About a mile from the roar of motorcycles crowding Phnom Penh’s main
boulevards, amid tranquil greenery, stands the house where Rory and
Melita Hunter have lived for the last three years.
“We fell in love with the place because it was a wooden, traditional
Khmer house,” said Mrs. Hunter as she gazed out at their lush garden
dotted with frangipani trees, sandstone boulders and orchids. “It
makes you feel like you are in a sanctuary.”
The Australian couple are founders of the Brocon Group, a Cambodian-
based property development company. Mr. Hunter, 34, holds the title of
chief executive, and Mrs. Hunter, 35, is the creative director. When
they first came to Cambodia in 2005, they lived on the banks of the
Mekong River in a small village outside the city. But the drastic
increase in traffic in and around the capital in recent years finally
pushed their commute to more than an hour, prompting them to seek a
more central location.
Foreigners are prohibited from owning land in Cambodia, so the Hunters
took a five-year lease on a 450-square-meter (4,844-square-foot) two-
story house that stands on 650 square meters (almost 7,000 square
feet). Their rent is the equivalent of $2,000 a month.
There are no official statistics on the average cost of rentals here
and several local real estate agents said that estimates tend to be
skewed by high rents for top-end properties. But they agree that the
market has slowed sharply in the global economic downturn. “There
seems to be a marked decrease in international funds arriving and
enquiring” about leaseholds, said Matthew Rendall, a partner with
Sciaroni Associates, a law firm based in Phnom Penh.
Even though the Hunters are renting, they have done a lot of work on
the house, which is built from native koki wood. “It provided us with
the opportunity to live in a home we could never have dreamed of
living in back home,” Mrs. Hunter said. “It’s also really open, which
you can only really find in the tropics.”
Indeed, the renovations made by the couple include new ceilings and
walls in the living room and kitchen — both rooms are completely open
to the garden and rain comes in during the wet season. They also added
new kitchen appliances and bathroom fittings, as well as a large L-
shaped sofa with a brick base in the living room.
Mrs. Hunter said the airiness provided by the open spaces is much
appreciated, particularly in the summer, when the city’s average
daytime temperatures exceed 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees
Fahrenheit), with high humidity. Many of the house’s interior doors
have louvers and there are slatted shutters on most of the windows —
all to help with the air flow.
Despite the improvements, the house retains much of its original
personality: terra-cotta tiles in the living room and terrazzo
flooring in the ground-floor bathroom have not been touched since the
house was built in the 1950s. (Things have certainly changed since the
house was first built, when grazing livestock inhabited the space that
is now the living room.)
Two exterior staircases lead to the upper floor, which has an 18-
square-meter (194-square-foot) balcony overlooking the garden. There
are four bedrooms, including a nursery for their 8-month-old son,
Naryth, and a master suite. All the rooms are painted white and
furnished simply, giving the interiors a rustic feel.
Outdoors, there is a rectangular swimming pool, a patio outfitted with
sofas that the couple uses for lounging and a small building that
houses the laundry room and a storage area.
Mrs. Hunter says the house has improved greatly from the “converted
garage feeling” it had when they moved in, and they now are thinking
about extending the lease to continue working on it.
In the future, she said, she hopes to remove the external stairs and
install a spiral staircase in the living room. “We have done a lot to
the house already and I think it still managed to retain its original
beauty,” she said. “But it’s work in progress.”
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