Tourism bonus at the end: Multicultural dining in Phnom Penh. And, for those who’re interested to know more about just how Phnom Penh as a city has transformed itself beyond recognition — giving stiff competition to Ho Chi Minh City as a capital of cool — please do read this travel piece from One Mile at a Time from 2019. It’s fittingly titled Phnom Penh, Cambodia: I’m In Love, and I think I’m in love with it too.
This review was published in Fukuoka, Japan, on my first-ever visit to the country, involving three airlines (including a Korean one) and four airports: NRT, HND and FUK, plus ICN for transit.
Asiana Airlines’ A350 and A380, ANA’s domestic 777-200ER and international 787-9, JAL’s domestic A350… all of these make for very special experiences with Japanese and Korean hospitality.
Introduction: An all-Boeing trip to Cambodia — with a Qatar Airways special
In early November 2024, after the festival of Diwali (for North Indians) — or Deepavali (for South Indians, including Singapore’s Tamil community) — on 31 October, I decided to head from Singapore to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for a quick weekend trip. Aside from touring the capital of this underdeveloped, but rapidly booming, Southeast Asian country with a dark history, I had a specific purpose in mind: fly Qatar Airways’ fifth-freedom route (QR971) from Phnom Penh (PNH), Cambodia, to Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Vietnam.
The prospect of trying out another exotic fifth-freedom route — one of only three such at the award-winning Oneworld airline, the others being São Paulo to Buenos Aires and Djibouti to Mogadishu, Somalia — was far too good to resist. In the past, I’ve flown a number of exotic fifth-freedoms in Southeast Asia: KLM (Singapore to Denpasar; Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur), Ethiopian (Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and back) and Gulf Air (Bangkok to Singapore — now discontinued). Besides QR, Emirates Airline also operates a fifth-freedom flight between Singapore and Phnom Penh (EK348/349), but since I’d already flown EK’s A380 in July 2024, I was much more interested in checking out the Oryx airline — Google what that means! (See spoiler for details.)
I arrived on SQ154 on the morning of 2 November (Saturday) on the Singapore Airlines 737 MAX, which would be my first time flying the infamous, scandal-ridden aircraft. This is easily the most comfortable narrowbody in Southeast Asia, with its lie-flat beds in Business Class. That’s something that’s otherwise confined to the A321neo in East Asia, on the likes of Starlux Airlines, Korean Air and China Airlines — but not Cathay Pacific’s non-flat A321neo seats — and soon Thai Airways on its upcoming A321neos, not to mention Air India’s ex-Vistara A321neos.
SQ remains the only Southeast Asian airline to have lie-flats, or indeed any seatback entertainment, on the 737 MAX, since Malaysia Airlines’ 737 MAXes have only recliners with streaming IFE — which I’ve now also flown (yes, in Business) in April 2025* — and Garuda Indonesia has decided against modernising its outdated 737-800 fleet with MAXes. I cannot really blame GA, since it’s well and truly fallen from its glory days of the 2010s, and continues to struggle with no outstanding order on the horizon… but MH really should have done better with its 737 MAXes. (Fortunately, MH later revealed some swanky suites on the 737 MAX 10 in April 2025 — but goodness knows if that plane will even enter service before 2030!)
*The purpose wasn’t flying MH’s inferior Business seats at all, but rather to explore the outstanding Oneworld lounges at Changi, called the ‘Oneworld lounge safari’ by Singaporean miles geeks. These are the Qantas Business Lounge, the British Airways Lounge and — especially renowned for à-la-carte dining — the Qatar Premium Lounge in Terminal 1, plus the (rather inconvenient to get to) Cathay Pacific Lounge in Terminal 4.
This would turn out to be a very, very costly mistake. The QR check-in staff at PNH refused to let me check in without a ‘Vietnam visa’, in spite of multiple pleas and entreaties. In desperation, now that check-in for Sunday’s QR971 flight had closed, I had no choice but to blow hundreds of USD on a third-party Vietnam visa agency with a reliable track record, so that they could arrange a visa-of-sorts for me in 24 hours. This done, I spent another big sum of money booking the same QR971 flight for the following day (Monday), and hundreds of USD more (millions of VND) — plus an hour speaking to a phone agent — to reschedule the connecting leg on SQ. The worst part? Eventually, the Vietnam immigration authorities didn’t even check for a visa — neither did they need one. Clearly, the Vietnamese government’s non-requirement of a visa was superseded by QR’s own policy… at great expense.
Ultimately, though, even if at a great cost, I did get to experience the self-proclaimed award-winning Oryx airline on one of its rare fifth-freedom routes, and that alone — plus the miles I’d gain from the payments — was worth the unnecessary money (nearly a thousand SGD) spent!
Flight routing
- 1SQ154 | Singapore to Phnom Penh | 2 November 2024 | 737 MAX 8 | 9V-MBJ
- 2QR971 and SQ185 | Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City to Singapore | 4 November 2024 | 777-300ER A7-BAN and 787-10 9V-SCO
Cambodia ahoy: New country, new aircraft type — but all-too-familiar airline
Saturday, 2 November. Early in the morning, I was up and awake to track which possible 737 MAXes might operate SQ154. It seems that Indian airlines are among the only ones to load a specific registration’s flying schedule on Flightradar24 more than 24 hours in advance, and so it’s always a mystery elsewhere in Asia.
As it turns out, 9V-MBJ, which you see at the top of the 4th picture below — having landed as SQ525 from Chennai, India, the previous evening — would do the honours. And so it was that this would be the second 737 of my restarted 737-flying story — after six years of avoiding it (2018–2024) — with the first being the similar-looking registration 9M-MXJ of Malaysia Airlines that June.
I’m incredibly fortunate to live on the east coast of Singapore — barely 10–15 minutes from the world’s best airport (as per the latest Skytrax rankings in April 2025), displacing arch-rival Doha Hamad. Soon enough, a Grab car was on the way.
Meanwhile, an ANA 787-9 (JA894A) in the Pokémon livery had arrived from Tokyo Haneda on the overnight NH843 sector, while another 787-9 would head to Tokyo Narita on the breakfast-time NH802 sector.
For once, my room was a higgledy-piggledy mess, instead of being neatly arranged as it usually is, because many of my clothes were drying on the floor and I couldn’t get them packed in time for the flight. In any case, once the white Toyota Corolla Altis arrived at the driveway, I was off and away. In fifteen minutes or so — just in the nick of time before check-in closed for SQ154 — I made it to Changi Terminal 2.
Terminal 2 is where most Star Alliance airlines are based, and is also where SQ conducts its operations to South and Southeast Asian countries (except India) plus Japan and South Korea. Other regions, including India, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America, are served from Terminal 3.
However, the occasional SQ flight may also depart from Terminal 1 (at the C1–3 gates closest to T3’s B10 gate) — as was the case in February 2025 with my first-ever Business Class Flight, on the night-time SQ510 sector to Bengaluru.
The SQ check-in kiosks were decked up with colourful elephants, serving as ‘loading’ animations, to celebrate Deepavali/Diwali. That’s similar to what I’ve seen during Christmas (candy canes and cartoon dinosaurs) and Chinese New Year, where whichever is the auspicious animal of the year — a snake in 2025, a dragon in 2024 — is shown in some sort of celebratory state.
The only holdouts are Turkish Airlines and the Mainland Chinese duo of Air China and Shenzhen Airlines, which use Terminal 1; and the Northeast Asian pair of Asiana Airlines and EVA Air, which use SQ’s main home of Terminal 3. The low-cost-oriented Terminal 4 does not host any Star Alliance airlines.
Now Cambodia actually uses two currencies: the US dollar (USD) plus its own currency, the Cambodian riel (KHR), with the nominal rate being USD 1 = KHR 4,000. Therefore, bypassing the glitzy shops, I headed to a currency exchange and got a sum of US$30 in three neat 10-dollar bills. This cost me S$40, with the exhange rate being SGD 4 = USD 3.
The upcoming departures were overwhelmingly SQ to Southeast Asia (along with Seoul and Tokyo) — plus ANA’s Narita and Air India’s Delhi flights. There was not a single airline below, whether direct operator or codeshare, that didn’t belong to the Star Alliance.
Now I proceeded, avoiding the unending luxury retail shops and also the Hard Rock Cafe.
Here’s a couple of planes that I managed to spot: 9V-SWM in Star Alliance livery, heading to Jakarta — the same 777-300ER that was involved in the SQ321 turbulence incident in May 2024 — and JA888A, a 787-9, off to Tokyo Narita. Indeed, I’d almost managed to spot the former the previous evening, at the nearby Changi Business Park office-plus-retail complex, also landing from CGK.
In fact, CGK is the only destination in Southeast Asia to receive SQ’s First Class product.* Prepandemic there were multiple frequencies, but now it’s only two 777-300ERs a day, on the early-morning SQ950/953 and the early-evening SQ964/965 sectors. It speaks to the premium demand that rich Jakartans have, coupled with the spiralling struggles of their own flag carrier Garuda Indonesia (which partners with SQ, by the way, and so does Malaysia Airlines — despite all of them belonging to competing alliances!).
*Indeed, I’m going to fly this product in June 2025 — on the SQ950 early-morning flight to Jakarta — and visit The Private Room in the process. I’ll be leaving Singapore for good and returning home to India to pursue an MBA, so I figured I might as well do it in style!
En route, I stopped by the myEureka gourmet popcorn shop and tried out a few flavours — egged on, no doubt, by the eager shop assistant — then proceeded to buy a pack of three: Cheese, Sour Cream & Onion and Himalayan Salted Caramel. Definitely worth a try, all the more so for me since it’s a Kris+ partner, which is SQ’s on-ground rewards and loyalty app.
A nearby display was airing some promos of Singtel TV, a major IPTV operator in Singapore, before cutting to some Formula 1 broadcast on beIN Sports that started with the family of some top racers.
Speaking of which, beIN Sports is owned by the Qatari state, and is one of the biggest forms of Qatari soft power along with the Al Jazeera media network and — you guessed it — the airline I was most excited to fly on this trip (though not without a ton of drama and wasted money!).
I plodded through the corridors of Terminal 2 with their freshly carpeted flooring, and at length I reached the F gates. A long sequence of travellators later, I made it to F35, where 9V-MBJ was ready and waiting — just as a massive A380 passed behind. This, then, would be my second and final 737 of 2024, after the very similar registration 9M-MXJ (Malaysia Airlines to Johor Bahru) in June.
From the jumbo A380 to the lean-and-mean 737 MAX, SQ now has an aircraft for every occasion… though it will never match the sheer fleet diversity of Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways or the Big 3 Chinese carriers, which all operate tons of A320s/A321s (never flown at SQ) and A330s (retired by SQ) in addition to A350s, 737s, 777s and 787s.
At the next gate stood sister-ship 9V-MBF, which had arrived as SQ535 from Kochi (COK), or Cochin, in the southern Indian state of Kerala. This is SQ’s only Indian destination not to be served by widebody aircraft, instead receiving two 737 MAX services every night where other Indian cities get one night service and, for most cities, one daytime service.
After this I had a look at the recent history of my plane, having most recently arrived from my former home of Chennai (MAA), another major South Indian city, on the daytime SQ525 sector.
The holding area had almost emptied and I was among the final few passengers to board, after hurriedly getting done with the at-gate security check. Far from fearing the 737 MAX, I was more than excited to finally step on one — with the typical all-round excellence that Singapore Airlines stands for, no less!
The flight: Boarding and departure
Flight: Singapore Airlines SQ154/SIA154
Date: Saturday, 2 November 2024
Route: Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN) to Phnom Penh–Pochentong (VDPP/PNH)
Aircraft: 9V-MBJ, Boeing 737 MAX 8
Age: 5 years 4 months at the time (built: 10 July 2019 — originally intended for SilkAir — and delivered: 21 December 2021)
Seat: 55K (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 7:30am SGT, UTC +8 (6:30am Indochina Time (ICT), UTC +7)
Departure: 8:05am SGT (7:05am ICT)
Arrival: 8:40am ICT (9:40am SGT)
Duration: 1 hour 35 minutes
Notes:
• First-ever flight on the 737 MAX, and second on a 737 in 2024, after Malaysia Airlines (MH) to Johor Bahru (near Singapore) in June… on a very similar registration, 9M-MXJ. These came after a 6-year period (2018–2024) where I completely avoided flying on 737s altogether, which was no doubt exacerbated by the two 737 MAX tragedies that killed 346 people — Lion Air 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian 302 in March 2019 — and the resultant groundings.*
• Fourth aircraft type flown on Singapore Airlines, after the A350-900 (multiple occasions), 787-10 (a couple of times) and A380 (once in December 2023, to Mumbai). I’m yet to fly the 777-300ER, but plan to do so in June 2025 — in First Class (though only to to Jakarta!).
• My first flight to the Kingdom of Cambodia, which became the sixth country I visited in Southeast Asia (ninth overall) — and only the third left-hand-drive country overall after the UAE (2022, 2024) and Vietnam (December 2023). In early May 2025 I will visit the Philippines, followed by Taiwan later in the month, adding two more to my LHD country total.
*In early 2025 alone I’ve flown six 737 flights, all 9M- (Malaysian)-registered: two 737-800s of Batik Air Malaysia in February, three 737-800s of Malaysia Airlines (including 9M-MXE twice) in March and April and another 737 MAX 8, also of MH, in April.
Two of the MH flights, both on the SIN–KUL sector, were in Business Class — the early-morning MH602 on 9M-MXU on 29 March, and the late-night MH610, on the 737 MAX (9M-MVG), on 12 April.
This, the deadliest of the 2020s so far — overtaking the shootdown of Ukraine International 752 in January 2020, with 176 deaths — restarted a long streak since 2018 where every year’s deadliest crash was on a 737… except 2023, where an ATR 72 crash of Nepal’s Yeti Airlines was the year’s worst air disaster. Jeju Air 2216 was the only one of these crashes (including Yeti) to have any survivors at all, even if only two of them.
Turning right past SQ’s cabin of 10 lie-flat Business Class seats — including two coveted ‘throne’ seats with maximum privacy — I went all the way back to seat 55K. Yes, SQ has seat numbering in the fifties and sixties even on its 737s… in contrast to just about every other narrowbody aircraft out there (barring a few exceptions), where row numbers top out at 30 or, at best, 35. Yay for that!
I had a glance at the safety card and Wi-Fi instructions, as a uniform KrisWorld introduction video started to play for everyone. This, of course, was the Panasonic eX3 system fitted on all SQ aircraft except the regionally configured A350 — 9V-SH series, which I’ve flown the most times by now — and the soon-to-be-retired 737-800s (9V-MG series) which have only streaming IFE.
But what’s most special about the IFE on SQ’s 737 MAXes is Panasonic’s Arc interactive moving-map platform, which I first experienced on now-defunct subsidiary Vistara’s A321neo in March 2023. (Indeed, that had been the worldwide launch customer of Arc back in 2019.) In fact, the 737 MAX is the only SQ aircraft type to have Arc instead of Panasonic’s previous Voyager3D moving-map interface, as I’d seen on the A380 in December 2023.
From the various perspectives, to the destination overviews, to the versatile controls and navigation — and even a dinosaur-themed kids’ mode — Arc really is one of the best moving-map solutions, if not THE best, in service today.
Meanwhile a number of Francophone passengers boarded, no doubt attracted by Cambodia’s historical and cultural ties to France.
As for the solitary duty-free catalogue, I didn’t really care for it. I try as much as possible to fly airlines with physical inflight magazines, like Cathay Pacific, Air India and Malaysia Airlines, but this isn’t always possible and — far more often than I’d like — I end up on non-magazine airlines like SQ, TG and SriLankan instead.
The cabin crew came round for the pre-departure checks, while I held a new pair of Sony earbuds in my hands… which I somehow managed to lose on returning from Phnom Penh (this keeps happening to me!!!). Shortly, SQ’s all-too-familiar safety video, with its calming violin notes and Singaporean vistas, was played.
I continued my little tradition of Capturing the Baby and His Parents on the River Safari, 737 MAX style. There was little to no glare, something I wish I could say for many other airlines. (Yes, looking at you, Thai Airways.)
Really, there’s very little difference between the screens on the 737 MAX and on widebody aircraft, with the only omission being power ports in Economy — something that the 10 Business lie-flat seats up front get.
We were ready to take off on this crisp November weekend morning, and during the taxi I managed to spy the tail of a parked Lufthansa plane — wearing the good old livery, no less — in the far distance, which I’ve enlarged below for clarity. As ever so often, we passed by Terminal 4, where Cathay Pacific and Korean Air are typically the only full-service carriers and the rest are LCCs.
Not long after 8, 9V-MBJ sailed into the shining skies above Singapore, the sun glinting on the split-scimitar winglets that are so typical of the 737 MAX and other newer 737 NGs. It’s always a pleasure to have the majestic expanse of land, water and — eventually — clouds below you, all the more so this early in the day (and I’m not an early riser!).
An SRK symphony on the Indian acting legend’s birthday
As ever, the very first thing that I did on reaching cruising altitude — something that’s only really possible on SQ — was to connect to the free Wi-Fi. As always, the next thing that I did was to track my plane on Flightradar24, surrounded as it was by a bunch of other 737s: mostly from Singapore and Malaysia Airlines, but also an obscure 737 (9M-WWB) of little-known Malaysian cargo startup MJets Air.
As it stands, 2 November is the birthday of Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan, universally known as SRK. And what better way to celebrate it than to dive into SQ’s vast Bollywood music collection — not to mention Jawan, the highest-grossing Indian movie of 2023, which I’ve mentioned in so many SQ and AI reviews before. (Full resolution here.)
The selection of SRK films for the album was as ecletic as it was timeless: Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1994), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Aśoka (2001), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), My Name Is Khan (2010), Dilwale (2015) and, of course, Jawan (2023) to name a few. (Full resolution here.) Meanwhile the cabin crew started rolling out the breakfast service as the 737 MAX cruised down the eastern Malaysian peninsular coast, near the town of Paka* in Terengganu state.
<i style="">*Fun fact: The word paka means ‘clever’ in my native language of Bengali!
I was expecting the breakfast to be so much worse, given SQ’s generally poor catering standards in Economy for Southeast Asian flights — see here, here and here. However, I was rather pleasantly surprised when the infamous square box deposited on my tray table contained things that were not only edible, but even enjoyable. While the dishes were standard for breakfast — scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, baked beans, potatoes, mushrooms (as in the below screenshot of the inflight menu) — the overall taste on this 737 MAX flight to Phnom Penh was much nicer than on the above A350 sectors involving Bangkok and Hanoi.
To round off the meal were a tub of Meiji strawberry yoghurt, a bottle of water and — I don’t think they add anything, but… — the not-really-needed dry bread roll, Lurpak butter and milk-in-a-stick, the last of which I really could do without. An airline as prestigious as SQ should do better than providing milk in a stick in a generic, garden-variety wrapper.
Here’s some flight details and the menu* from the SingaporeAir app, and, over at Flightradar24, some more SQ 737 MAXes — plus a 737-800 headed to fellow Cambodian destination Siem Reap — in the vicinity.
And, as you can see, years of steering clear of the 737 were now broken: I can’t emphasise enough how important that was for me.
*Why bother with saying ‘from the bakery’ below, when it’s not like there’s anything special with that bread roll? They could at least give danishes or croissants with jam — like Malaysia Airlines did on a recent flight in Business Class in March 2025.
Some more Jawan-tertainment on descent
I couldn’t resist playing some song-and-dance scenes from Jawan to elevate the mood for King Khan’s birthday, which had already been set by the previous few songs. As always, no KrisWorld movie/show can begin before a long procession of ads for (a) luxury watchmakers, (b) banks — both local ones like UOB and OCBC, and global ones like HSBC and Standard Chartered — and © the ever-present Indocafé.
But this time there were no Helvetic horologists: no Patek Philippe, no Hublot, Vacheron Constantin, nothing! Instead there was AIA, the insurance company, with something no less elite and exclusive than that: Wealthbeing, which, um… let’s just pinch the description from AIA’s website. (Emphasis mine.)
A by invitation only wealth hub offering holistic wealth management services to both regional and domestic Affluent and High Net Worth individuals and families.
Now that’s more like it! Why blow a piffling S$200,000 on a Patek when you can invest that money, and more, into protecting your family, right?! Or so AIA would have you believe…
Anyway, on with the movie scenes, and in particular the most foot-tapping number of all (which I’ve mentioned in many previous reports): none other than <i style="font-weight: bold;">Chaleya, with SRK and leading lady Nayanthara cavorting in picturesque locales. There’s also a little girl, Suji, for company, who actually plays matchmaker between the two — wanting to ‘adopt’ him as her father!
On a subsequent SQ flight I’d actually be watching the film in slightly more detail, specifically the rousing climactic scenes. This was on New Year’s Day 2025, on the afternoon SQ509 service from Bengaluru — perhaps the most leisurely way to fly from India to Singapore — and this came straight after Inside Out 2, (then) the highest-grossing animated movie ever.
On the whole I was in a buoyant mood — no doubt humming the tune of Chaleya — as I penned my rather minimalist journal entry, marking the entry of the 737 MAX into my travelling history. A troubled aircraft it may have been, but five years on there’s no more reason to worry about it than any other aircraft.
The Boeing head honchos were forced to pay for their greed, to the tune of billions of dollars, and now are desperate to get the 777X and 737 MAX 10 certified and flying by 2027 at most — but I as a passenger need no longer worry!
Keep calling me Kampuchea: Kissing the Kingdom’s key runway
With the clock being turned back an hour, I monitored the aircraft’s final descent into the Cambodian capital, while observing all the fun aircraft around. Private airline Cambodia Airways has only five aircraft, all from the A320 family, of which an A319 with the misleading registration XU-787 was headed to Bangkok, and a fairly new (2020-built) sharkletted A320, XU-763, was headed to Sanya (SYX) on China’s Hainan island.
In fact, the flight from Phnom Penh to Sanya (flight no. KR9755) continues to Singapore — the SYX–SIN leg being a fifth-freedom leg! How cool is that?! This twice-weekly sector is the only nonstop service between Sanya and Singapore. That it’s operated by Cambodia Airways can only mean that it’s subsidised by Hainan’s local government.
Speaking of Hainan, its namesake airline was sending a 737-800 from the island’s other major city, Haikou (HAK), to Singapore. With Hainan having a visa-free policy for many nationalities compared to Mainland China, the island is attractive for several tourists. Hainan Airlines flies from Haikou to Singapore several times weekly, as do Scoot and (until April 2025) Jetstar Asia.
(In May 2025, Jetstar Asia terminated Haikou, leaving Wuxi, another smaller city, as its only other Mainland Chinese destination.)
But we’re not here for Hainan, right? Read on!
It’d be only a few minutes more for 9V-MBJ to touch down at Phnom Penh’s Pochentong International Airport, shortly before 9 o’clock on a sunny November day. As previously with Mumbai and Ho Chi Minh City, the airport was not located in the middle of nowhere, but rather above a big block of houses.
Mine was the only 737 — or, indeed, non-A320 — in sight, as every other aircraft on the ground was an A320 or A321, including Thai Airways, startup AirAsia Cambodia* (code: KT) and flag carrier Air Cambodia, which renamed itself from Cambodia Angkor Air in January 2025.
*A year after starting operations in May 2024, KT still has only two A320s (XU-818 and XU-819), and I fear it may be being starved of aircraft just like the Indonesian and Philippine (formerly also Indian) arms of AirAsia… all while the Malaysian and Thai units continue to gobble up A320neos and A321neos.
For the first time, I’d done the sensible thing and gone for an eSIM (bought online on Klook) instead of a physical one. This helped me to connect to Flightradar24 almost immediately on the ground. Soon the local network operator, Cellcard, greeted me with a welcome message. The timing was perfect, as +855 is Cambodia’s international country calling code!
I’ve always bought eSIMs for each of my subsequent trips in late 2024 and early 2025, especially from Pelago — a travel-booking website owned by SQ itself — as that provides extra miles per SGD via the Kris+ app.
Definitely one of the most comfortable narrowbody rides I’ve taken after the Vistara A321neo (March 2023) and SriLankan A321 (November 2023), though sometimes I do wish Singapore Airlines joined Team A320-family — like Thai Airways did — instead of Team 737.*
This wasn’t one of those flights where I’d be posing for pictures with the cabin crew, or even note down their names, but I did thank them for their service and they reciprocated with typical SQ-like efficient warmth as I left the aircraft.
*Only four Star Alliance members (out of 25) do not operate the A320 family. (Indeed, many operate mostly or only Airbuses, like Aegean and TAP, plus former member SAS and future member ITA Airways.)
Out of the four exceptions, two — LOT Polish Airlines and Copa Airlines — don’t operate Airbuses at all, and the other two — Singapore and Ethiopian Airlines — operate Airbuses (specifically A350s) but not the A320 family.
Ads for the Mazda CX-8 SUV on the jetbridge welcomed me to the Kingdom of Cambodia, and I was also able to spot XU-819, one of KT’s two A320s, with a big Angkor Wat decal painted on it.
PNH: A small but very impressive little airport (bravo!)
I was expecting the unexpected, in a nice way, from PNH… and, my word, did it impress me! For a relatively small airport of a relatively small country, it was still important enough to be served multiple times daily by Singapore Airlines — and on fifth-freedom routes on Emirates and Qatar Airways — plus a number of Mainland Chinese airlines.
Like the Shanghai-based LCC Spring Airlines, whose A320 (with big ch.com titles — that’s their website) was preparing to return to Shanghai’s Pudong Airport as 9C8534. Curiously, the inbound A320 spends the night at PNH, and returns to PVG the following morning.
As seen above with the Sanya flights, that’s far from the last you’ll see of Chinese involvement here… though the airport, plus two others in Cambodia, is a partnership with Vinci Airports of France. There were some ads for two of the country’s three major telcos, Smart Axiata and Metfone, with the third, Cellcard, coming up later.
Here are the Flightradar24 details of some of the above-mentioned flights, including two from Cambodia Airways: an A319 en route to Singapore and an A320 bound for Sanya. The airline no longer flies directly to Singapore in May 2025, going only via Sanya instead.
Qatar Airways’ other flight from Ho Chi Minh City (not continuing from PNH) had just departed, and was flying nearby.
I went down a level, and that provided great views of the sharkletted A320s from Spring Airlines and Thai Airways. Here’s my first point of praise about PNH: the signage was unexpectedly cute! The friendly rounded English font gave the clear impression that this would not be as generic and boring as the airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that I’d seen in December 2023.
After showing my visa-on-arrival to the friendly female agent — though she wanted to know why I would be returning via Vietnam (on the Qatar fifth-freedom flight) and not go straight back to Singapore — I was on my way to baggage claim.
But not before a smallish Dufry duty-free store, in which alcohol was the most prominent item on show. There were only a few luggage belts, but they were all showing a broad mix of ads — some bright orange, advertising Cellcard 4G LTE (also seen on the pillars); others for local banks like Wing Bank; still others targeting Mainland Chinese tourists.
The codeshares for my flight were no less diverse, showing Star Alliance members from as far afield as Air New Zealand, ANA, Lufthansa and Swiss, in addition to Virgin Australia.
I made a short detour to the restroom, employing my standard rule of thumb: always use the handicapped restroom wherever possible, since it provides the maximum space and also is likely to have a hand shower (bidet spray) next to the toilet. Here, too, the signage was a vibrant shade of neon green, and also used distinctive illustrations and exotic fonts!
Oh yes, I won’t be forgetting the airport signage fonts any time soon — it was that much more memorable than almost anywhere else I’ve seen…
All was done, and I could finally step out of the airport building and into the pick-up area, where rows and rows of men (only men) waved placards announcing their near and dear ones. Ads for Smart Axiata were all around, and when I looked up I found myself surrounded by billboards for AirAsia Cambodia, proclaiming its World’s Best Low-cost Carrier status.
One thing’s for sure: that alternative airasia logo was a short-lived misguided experiment, and I’m glad to see it gone — though unfortunately Flightradar24 will continue to use it for years, if not decades…
Thereafter, it was only a matter of heading to the exit gates and being surrounded by the wave of old Priuses.
It was only a matter of firing up the Grab app, which operates in 8 Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia and Myanmar, and ordering a ride to pick me up from the airport. No points for guessing which model turned up! This is really the home of older Toyota Priuses.
This really was the land of the secondhand, mid-to-late-2000s Toyota Prius. Singapore is the only other place in Southeast Asia with so many Priuses, but being the advanced, avant-garde rich country that it is, all those Priuses are new builds — including the ghastly-looking latest generation with its number plate on the rear bumper — and not these old mid-2000s models shipped from the US!
Presently, a metallic blue Prius turned up, and I bundled into it with bag and baggage. For some reason, the display was in Spanish! With a bit of fiddling, I was able to change it to English, something the driver wouldn’t have been able to figure out by themselves.
A city of contrasts: Hypermodern meets traditional
I was expecting a more or less small-town, homely feel from the Cambodian capital. Instead, I got row after row of fancy US-imported cars: Teslas, Fords, even Cadillacs and Scions, which you won’t find anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Practically every major car brand was here, from Kia to Peugeot to Ford, and this — at least partly — concealed the lack of a McDonald’s!
Some more of the incredibly Westernised roads of Phnom Penh, with all manner of brands — like Carl’s Jr., Swensen’s and Texas Chicken —I didn’t expect to exist outside Singapore in Southeast Asia, much less in a country as developing as Cambodia!
Notice that Thai Airways booking office at the top of the fourth picture in this gallery!
I had some words to say regarding the Chinese-imported Cadillac Optiq SUV — Cadillac is of course a major luxury marque in China…
At length I reached my serviced apartment, a stone’s throw from AEON Mall Phnom Penh, and had to WhatsApp the front desk in order to be let in. As my room wouldn’t be ready for some time, I offered to keep my bags down at the reception and head out to the mall for lunch.
Meanwhile, back in Singapore, the annual KrisFlyer Fest was being held at the Jewel Changi, with all sorts of activities and meet-ups… I do wish I could be there, but I wouldn’t trade it for a weekend (plus one day) in Cambodia!
