From an aerial view, the new O’Russei Market may look like a modernized shopping mall. But from the inside on Monday, it looked more like a giant construction site.
Red hot metal cinders were hurled through the air in every direction, as brief lightning flashes from arc welders illuminated the dark corners lined with stalls not yet occupied by the 6,000 expected vendors.
Phnom Penh Governor Chea Sophara said at least 2,000 vendors had moved in by Monday but were still working around more than 100 construction workers and their equipment.
The market should be complete, with all the workers moving out, in “two more weeks,” he said.
The market officially opened on Friday, but the building was far from finished. Vendors complained they could not keep their wares in the market because gates with locks had not yet been installed.
Not a single person, however, stood idle in the nearly-completed market Monday afternoon.
Delivery boys wove through construction workers, deftly stepping over tangles of cords and piles of rubble on the concrete floor.
Vendors appeared anxious to get things rolling at their new market, laying tile, painting walls and arranging their goods for buyers.
Nearly 200 stalls are still unfinished. But far more than that were empty in the three-story building.
Sprawling skylights and high ceilings gave the market a much airier feel than others in town, and the concrete floors could eliminate some of the mud that plagues other markets during the rainy season.
Chea Sophara said the vendors were “very happy” with their new market, and renovations of another market will be discussed in the next two or three weeks.
