I could have sworn Air Asia used to serve proper meals, even on their short flights. Now they have stale cruddy sandwiches that you have to pay for, just like Austrian Airlines, and they’re charging for checked in baggage. These little stinginesses seem to be harbingers of inevitable fare hikes as the oil price rises. Anyway, I only have a cabin bag on this trip.

Phnom Penh international airport is small and hassle free. Phnom Penh is at the confluence of the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers. The city is named after an old woman in the late 14th century who, legend has it, found five Buddha statues in a nook within a tree and had a hill (phnom) built to house them, so that the city’s name means “Penh’s Hill”. I take a tuk-tuk into town. The road is good but dusty. There are plenty of signs of development along the way and the road swarms with motorbikes. Phnom Penh is a city - a sprawling town, really, at the moment - getting onto its feet. May it have better town planners than Bangkok.

Learning that I caome from Australia, my cheerful driver, Sam, does the usual “G’day mate”. His accent is unusually good. He says he used to work with Australians. I have a morning to fill in before I have to catch the bus to Siem Reap. Sam suggests a short tour. While I prefer exploring on my own, I decide I’d rather have a driver than foot it around in the heat and dust. In any case, by the number of tuk-tuks and motorbike taxis hanging around hoping for customers, I realise that if I get out and wander I won’t get a moment’s peace.

I decide to leave the royal palace and national museum for when I get back. The present king, Norodom Sihamoni, was a classical dance instructor, choreographer and cultural ambassador in Paris before he was called back to be king. As we drive past the palace, Sam explains that the king is unmarried and might be “a bit different”. But it doesn’t matter if he has no heirs, since a council chooses the monarch. I ask Sam about getting an express boat to or from Siem Reap. He says the Mekong is too low and there are no boats at the moment, so bang goes that idea.

I want to have a bite at Happy Herb’s Pizza on the Tonle Sap waterfront. Ganja is a traditional ingredient in Khmer cooking. It isn’t legal in Cambodia, but it must be somewhat tolerated. The guy who takes my order asks discreetly if I’d like to smoke a joint. I say no, the pizza will be fine. The pizza tastes good, but I can’t feel any effect. I guess they only waved the ganja jar over it, which was pretty much what I expected. (Later, however, a friend tells me that sometimes they smear the pizza with hash paste. This happened to him and he ended up missing a flight because he couldn’t get out of bed. Maybe the kitchen made the call to not give the lone, patently clueless female traveller a knockout dose. If so, I’m grateful.)

Next stop is the Russian Market, which has a section for locals and a section selling silk, handcrafts and fake antiques for tourists. In the local meat section the vendors, mostly women, squat inside wooden booths and chop the meat on wooden boards. The tourist section is a pain because - par for the course in tourists markets - no sooner does your eye light on something you might vaguely be interested in before a chorus of “Madame, madame, you look, you buy,” starts up, and many things that you don’t want at all are thrust in front of your glazing eyes. I end up buying a fake antique tobacco pipe (white china with two blue dragons) for a few dollars from a pleasant lady who gives me time to look at her wares. I ask her if it’s actually usable, but she doesn’t know. Probably not. You can get these pipes in Bangkok, too, but the asking price is several dollars cheaper here.

Sam drives me up to Wat Phnom, where I see –

a drum:

a shrine to the genie or spirit Preah Chau, popular with Chinese and Vietnamese worshippers:

a monkey:

…searching for the jewel in the heart of the bucket:

some kids playing with a motorbike:

Down the bottom of the temple are a few beggars and trinket sellers. As I wait to cross the road, two or three guys on motorbikes ask if I needed a ride. Unlike in Bangkok, the motorbike taxis don’t wear safety/identifying vests, so that there’s no way of telling whether the guy is actually a taxi driver. Sam brings the tuk-tuk back and drives me to the bus. All in all, my impression of Phnom Penh from this first half day is that it’s far from Mos Eisley vileness, but still a bit of a wild west town — a place to go if you like frontiers. (Later this will be amended to “a place to go if you like frontiers with great, cheap restaurants.”)

The 300k ride to Siem Reap in an airconditioned bus was $10. The bus almost had all mod cons — just not quite:

Next up: an extrovert, and a culinary rubicon crossed.