The Great Pebble Dash

So there’s this urban facility currently enthralling hundreds of Phnom Penh denizens, both sexes, all ages.

Without fanfare or announcement, sturdy all-weather fitness machines - exercise bikes, balance bars, swing hipsters, gorilla grabs – recently sprang up like metallic mushrooms along the pedestrianized area of the city’s renovated waterfront.

Such a success they’ve been! Morning, noon and evening you can’t get to them through the crush. Even at midnight, there’s usually a short queue for the most popular contraption – the swing hipster.

Instructions for safe use and health warnings –‘Consult a doctor if in doubt that exercise is suitable for you’ - are posted on prominent noticeboards in French and Khmer. Thus it’s likely the machines are guilt gifts from France (Cambodia’s colonial master 1863–1953) abetted (without cash) by Phnom Penh’s City Hall.

Nothing wrong with paybacks of course. But, despite the genius behind the concept and despite health and safety concerns, a certain small detail in the big picture has eluded international officialdom.

The machines’ bases – protectors against grazed knees, scraped palms and dashed skulls - do not comprise of rubber matting, wood chips, or sand. It must have taken a very special kind of civil servant to come up with -


- pebbles.

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