As you would expect from a capital city, Phnom Penh has a stately feel, with numerous wide-open spaces with monuments and memorials. It is not an overwhelming city but quite simple to navigate thanks to the grid structure of streets imposed by the French, with the riverfront and various markets at the heart of things. Evidence of a building boom was clear (especially on Koh Pich or Diamond Island next to the gaudy casino complex Naga World where Tom and I both ran – amused by the Dubai-style apartments cropping up including one called ‘Elite Town’) but didn’t take away from the charm and harmony of the city centre. We were staying in a colonial villa set it a vast garden with a swimming pool, very centrally located, called the Kabiki.

Funnily enough a family we had befriended on Koh Rong Samloem were also staying there (we hardly saw any other guests) and we had a group outing by chance to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda on our first afternoon. Exploring the group of buildings and landscaped gardens are an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, highlights being the Emerald Buddha in the silver pagoda (named after the 5329 silver floor tiles), a huge Buddha footprint, a scale model of Angkor Wat and a 642 meter long fresco mural, illustrating scenes from the Ramayana, a famous Hindu epic poem.

Later we walked along Sisowath Quay, which runs 4km along the river passing a temple apparently housing one of Buddha’s eyebrows (!) where Khmers were donating flowers bought from the neighbouring stalls. It ends at the lively night market where we had dinner one evening. On route we stopped to admire the view at River Crown for a drink and ice-cream, it faces the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia) which is probably a better choice.

We had lunch one day at the bustling Psar Thmei (Central Market). Our other two days we enjoyed the menu at ARTillery, a café close to our hotel which had a lot of gluten free and healthy options including the first hummus we had had in a few weeks. For dinner we had a lovely meal at Sugar Palm, where Gordan Ramsay supposedly spent time learning how to cook fisk amok from Chef Kethana.

For our final dinner before going to the airport we went to the Tamarind on lively Street 240 a short walk from our hotel. The menu has a mix of Middle Eastern, Khmer and European food.

We enjoyed a hour or so at the National Museum, set in a red-brick symmetrical building that was overrun with bats after being abandoned in 1975. The four linked galleries around a leafy courtyard display an impressive range of sculptures and artefacts, laid out roughly chronologically, many taken from the Angkor temples. Later items of interest include the record-breaking longest shawl in the world on its loom and a piece of moon rock gifted to Cambodia from the USA.

There is a great playground in Wat Botum Park close to the Cambodian-Vietnamese Friendship Monument and another opposite Wat Phnom, the hill which the city was named after. At the top of the hill is a white stupa containing a vihara where Khmer pray and try to discover their fortunes and a shrine to Daun Penh (Grandmother Penh) who founded the sanctuary, according to myth. A giant lawn clock on the hillside is interesting to see but doesn’t quite tell the right time.

I have read the harrowing, unputdownable memoir ‘First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia Remembers’ by Loung Ung (also a Netflix film by Angelina Jolie) and a visit to the Killing Fields felt like something we needed to do, in order to grasp the true horrors of recent history. We decided to skip the more graphically devastating Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in the city itself. It started raining as we headed off by moto tuk-tuk, the journey 12km south-east out of the city. Choeung Ek was the site of mass murder under the Khmer Rouge regime. Numbers are sketchy but possibly upwards of 17,000 men, women and children lost their lives here in less than 3 years. The memorial contains the remains of 8985 bodies exhumed in 1980, skulls movingly displayed in the glass-fronted stupa in seventeen tiers arranged by age, gender and the method in which they were executed. A brilliant audio-guide takes you around the site including interviews with survivors and music inspired by the tragedy.

It’s important to remember this harrowing moment in the history of Cambodia. To fully understand Phnom Penh you need to appreciate that it was forcibly evacuated and left to ruin by the Khmer Rouge less than a generation ago. Time in the capital was a fitting conclusion to a varied and memorable three-weeks in Cambodia.