Phew – it’s a whole lot more energetic and frenetic here; from the inexhaustible attempts of restaurants owners, tuk tuk drivers and tour guides to extract our cash (through fair means and foul) to the bonkers traffic that we for some reason decided to cycle through on our first day, we’ve had a bit of a culture shock since we finally tore ourselves away from Laos last week.

The morning after my monkey attack I wasn’t experiencing any rabies symptoms so we embarked on another truly shit thirteen hour journey from the Laos border to Phnom Penh, arriving at about midnight in a stinking mood – getting into unfamiliar cities late at night is always quite unpleasant and Phnom Penh’s cheap guesthouse area is not at its best in the dark – but within ten minutes of getting off the bus we’d been offered opium, hash, coke and speed so we soon perked up again. Actually we didn’t purchase any, we just had a good night’s sleep and woke up to a less scary looking city.

Despite being on a tight schedule in Cambodia we’ve ended up staying in the Phnom Penh for four nights because, like a wart, it’s ugly but it grows on you with time. The entire city centre seems to be undergoing a very, very slow facelift that has rejuvenated some areas to former glories, whereas others are still in line for a nip tuck. I’m no town planner but I reckon priority number one should probably be drainage…it rained heavily for about an hour yesterday while we were in the National Museum and when we came out we were stranded: the city centre had flooded, which can’t be good considering the monsoon season hasn’t really kicked in yet. To get back to out guesthouse we had to wade through a foot of truly disgusting black rain water mixed with drain scum, with unidentified objects brushing past our legs every ten seconds.

Phnom Penh used to be known as the Pearl of the Orient; it had a post-colonial hey day in the fifties and sixties but it was completely abandoned in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took control of the country, forcing the urban population into rural agrarian collectives – or simply massacring them in the killing fields of Cheow Ek. These days, the capital encapsulates a lot of Cambodia’s less appealing characteristics – drugs are practically on tap, poverty, begging and child prostitution are common and the infrastructure is decidedly shaky – but, considering the political and social turmoil that Cambodia experienced during the sixties and seventies, the devastation of the U.S. secret bombing campaign and the unspeakable horror of the Khmer Rouge regime, you have to admire Phnom Penh and its inhabitants for their determination to rebuild the city, themselves and their country.

As well as the change of pace it’s also been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since we arrived: we’ve visited two horrifying museums explaining the causes and consequences of the Khmer Rouge period (as far as you can explain complete madness), and although I knew a bit about the genocide here during my degree, I didn’t really get my head around the mass murder of two million people I looked at their photos, saw their skulls piled up in heaps and walked around the rooms and fields where they died.

We’ve also had great food and beer, shopped in the crazy markets and seen the beautiful relics of the mighty Angkorian era in the stunning National Museum, all of which has left me feeling a bit emotionally topsy-turvey and in need of some low-grade mental activity. We’re on to Siem Reap next to see what Cambodia looked like a few centuries earlier when the Angkor Empire was bossing the entire region – but after that I think it’s time for a bit of beach therapy on the coast.