Despite initial impressions, however, the heart of Phnom Penh, immediately west of the river, has a strong appeal. The French influence is particularly evident, from the colonial shophouses lining the boulevards to the cheese-filled baguettes, and here and there a majestic Khmer building animates the cityscape. The Phnom Penhois are open and friendly, and the city itself is small enough to get to know quickly. Phnom Penh may not have much in the way of tourist attractions - the majority of sights can be covered in a day or two - but many visitors end up lingering, if only to soak up the unique indolent atmosphere of this neglected city.

Phnom Penh's history began in 1372, when a local widow, Lady Penh, stumbled across a floating trunk containing four bronze Buddha statues and another in stone, washed up by the Mekong River. She saw them as bearers of good fortune and had a small temple built for them high above the water level to guard against flooding. This hill became known as Penh's hill - Phnom Penh - a name adopted by the town that grew up around the site. Phnom Penh was briefly made the capital in the fifteenth century, sacked and destroyed by the invading Thais in 1834, then reinstated as capital again in 1866 under the French. The city flourished during the Indochina years, but the departure of the French signalled the beginnings of political in-fighting in Cambodia, with Phnom Penh at the centre. Then came the Khmer Rouge whose experimental ideology rejected an urban existence, and the city was completely emptied, many of its buildings destroyed. It wasn't until 1979 and the Vietnamese victory over the Khmer Rouge that people began drifting back to the devastated city. From a low of around fifteen thousand during the Pol Pot era, the population now stands at around one million.

Prosperity has also been slowly returning, and mobile phones, land cruisers, and glitzy karaoke joints are much in evidence. Although not a modern, developed capital by any means, it's still a huge contrast to the rest of the country, where the majority of Khmers live a simple, rural existence, earning an average weekly wage of less than $5