A girl sells water outside Angkor Wat in Phnom
Penh. Photograph: Ben Robson

Like many people who first arrive, I'm not quite sure on where to begin with Phnom Penh. Do I tell you about the time a hefty man came to the hostel in which I was staying to "sort out some business" with a fellow westerner who had scored himself a lovely Khmer lady the previous evening, only to discover that she did not think a western male was a novelty but purely a new pair of shoes?

Or do I delve deeper into the genocidal history of this impoverished nation which is so recent that you were probably singing along to Postman Pat whilst an insanely paranoid dictatorial leader massacred up to a staggering third of the country's population?

The beauty of this capital is that you can have it all ... if you want it. Some westerners choose to visit the genocide museum (formerly the torture camp of Pol Pot) and go on to walk amongst remains of clothing and bone in the huge craters where the bodies were dumped following execution. For some it is too much.

The amazing thing is that after all this, your motorbike taxi driver will ask, quite matter-of-factly, "You want to shoot gun now?" You laugh in a sort of "Ha ha, yeah, let's make fun of the ignorant westerner" kind of a way, but then you realise the driver is waiting anxiously for your response. It's true. Some people choose to go to the city's shooting range, run by the army for additional money-pocketing purposes, usually after or before seeing the tower of skulls erected in memory of the thousands who met such a horrible death. But hey, who's going to turn down the chance to fire off 30 rounds from an M16 for a mere £10? Right? Unbelievable. I won't even mention the inescapable irony of the capital's huge tourist-targeted gun crime problem.

So after being offered a wealth of daily activities such as the above, or possibly visiting the more stomach-settling Wats (Buddhist temples), taking a river cruise, shopping around the old Russian and Central Markets for trinkets or perhaps that Beer Lao T-shirt necessity, what's on offer in the evening?

Well, you can choose to go and party like a rockstar, dine like a king on a very different kind of "happy" meal, womanise like Casanova or watch a foggy French dialogue, Korean-subtitled Bridget Jones' Diary 2 which that lovely woman swore was the real thing.

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