Driving into Phnom Penh the first thing you notice is the bustle. This is an open, working city, where shop fronts are deliberately left wide open to allow in cooling breezes and entice the customer with the produce. Workshops ring with the sound of saws and hammers on steel, and there’s constant activity wherever you look.

I first arrived in the city in the late autumn of 2009, passing through on my way to Australia, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. I arrived from Bangkok, and the streets and roads were immediately different, unpaved a lot of the way, my taxi throwing up dust as it weaved its way between the ocean of scooters and tuk tuks.

The roads changed from what were essentially rough shanties to larger buildings and hardware shops to smaller streets that all seemed to specialize in selling one type of product. Here was the street that sold lamps, fans, and mattresses, then you’d turn a corner and pass by three tailor shops in a row. Next, there would be a street of mobile phone shops. To my mind it didn’t seem to make sense setting up two shops right next to each other that sold the same thing, but I quickly picked up that it was the done thing in Cambodia.

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