As we travelled South-East Asia, one city continually evoked more negative sentiments from fellow travellers than most. We heard how Phnom Penh was run down, how it was dangerous, and many other bad reports. So it was with a little trepidation that we set off from Banlung on a hard, bumpy, ten-hour bus ride, arriving in the capital of Cambodia in the late in the afternoon. The horror stories, as they turned out — as they always turn out —  were baseless. Just like most of the horror stories you hear while travelling.

While Phnom Penh has a depressing period in its recent history, and certainly has more poverty than many other South-East Asia cities, it is an interesting city filled with friendly residents and we're glad we didn't skip it.

The city is located at the confluence of the Tonlé Sap and the mighty Mekong River. The Tonlé Sap is unusual for a river in that it seasonally reverses direction. From November to May, Cambodia's dry season, the Tonlé Sap drains into the Mekong River. However, when the year's heavy rains begin in June, the Tonlé Sap backs up to form an enormous lake.

Phnom Penh is associated with some of the worst atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime. In April 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge defeated the unpopular US-backed regime of Lon Nol. As KR troops marched into the city, the streets were filled with residents celebrating their arrival and Nol's defeat. But jubilation quickly turned to terror as within hours the troops had given orders for the entire city of 2 million to evacuate to the countryside. The evacuation was total and included the old and the infirm. Anyone who resisted was killed. Many thousands died leaving the city. The KR used the threat of US bombings as the reasoning for the evacuation, but the real motivation was their desire to turn Cambodia into a purely agrarian-based communist society. By the time the Vietnamese army defeated the KR in 1979, they had killed about one Cambodian in every five, making them the most lethal regime in the twentieth-century in terms of people killed as a proportion of the population.

It might have a sad history, but Phnom Penh is lively, energetic city. The Riverside bustles with people, day and night. You'll find Hindu and Buddhist worshippers going about their devotions, families enjoying a stroll together and large numbers of people group dancing to music blaring from portable stereo systems.

We stayed at the fantastic Frangipani Villas, a boutique hotel set in an immaculately restored 1960s style villa. We can't recommend it highly enough. The suites are spacious and as immaculately restored as the exterior of the building and the staff are friendly and helpful.

One of the best ways to get around the city is to hire a tuk-tuk with a driver for the day. Many drivers will also speak a little English and will be able to give you a little information about the places they're taking you to. Arrange the price and destinations beforehand. Our driver's first stop was the Royal Palace. This large beautiful palace was built during the nineteenth-century using French technology and Cambodian designs. Luckily it survived through the troubles of the twentieth-century intact. Nearby, you'll find the excellent National Museum, which contains a very good collection of Angkorian artworks, including lots of statues of hindu gods. There is a very good guided tour, which is worthwhile.

"This is a sad place, and nobody wants to work here." This is how our tour guide at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum explained the shortage of guides, and by the end of our tour, we could understand why nobody would want to work in this place. The museum is housed within the building that was used as the KR's notorious S21 Security Prison. The building was originally built as a school. The KR turned it into a detention and interrogation centre after their invasion of the city. An estimated twenty-thousand people were imprisoned here where they were held and repeatedly tortured for an average period of two to three months, before being transported to the killing fields at Choeung Ek to be murdered. Only twelve people are known to have survived being imprisoned here. Many similar detention centres and killing fields are spread across Cambodia.

Surprisingly (to us at least) for such a chaotic and violent regime, the KR kept meticulous records of each prisoner interred, including a photograph taken upon their arrival at the facility. The museum is filled with these photographs, many of them woman, children and KR cadres and officers.

The way S21 operated was a depressingly familiar story: through repeated torture (using techniques that included water-boarding, just like some western democracies of today), prisoners were made to confess to whatever paranoid conspiracies the interrogators believed to be true. In doing so, the prisoners were made to implicate family, friends and coworkers. These people would then be brought in for interrogation and the cycle of violence would by perpetuated.

In a glum and subdued mood, we travelled from the prison to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, the best known of the many killing fields across Cambodia that the KR used for executions. More than 1.3 million Cambodians were killed in these places.

The site is dominated by a large stupa, build there as a memorial. It is filled with more than 5000 skulls excavated from the surrounding mass graves.

Victims were first made to dig themselves a grave before being killed. Having no trade with the outside world, the KR had little ammunition, so to save on bullets, victims were bayonetted or bludgeoned to death with pickaxes. Children and babies were killed by executioners holding them by their feet and beating them against a tree known as the killing tree. The bones of some of these victims still rest at the base of the tree.

After execution, chemicals were scattered over the bodies. These chemicals served two purposes: to hide the smell of the rotting bodies, which may have raised suspicions from villagers living nearby, and to ensure that any survivors were poisoned.

Phnom Penh has an excellent selection of cafes and restaurants: The Foreign Correspondents Club is a popular with tourists but is still a great place to go for a stiff G 'n T or to act our your Vietnam War correspondent fantasies. Friends Restaurant is one of the best places to eat in the city.  It's run by a not-for-profit organisation which looks after the needs of street children in Cambodia. They train students from impoverished backgrounds to work in the restaurant trade, and the Friends restaurant is the final step of the training and is run by supervisors and students, who staff all aspects of the restaurant from waiters to chefs. People trained by this charity are well respected and can be found working in all the best restaurants in Phnom Penh. Not only is Friends an incredible charity, but it's some of the best cuisine in South East Asia. At the other end of the price spectrum, we had some incredible food in the Russian Market. There are also loads of restaurants and cafes in the Khaosan-Road-like farang-enclave on the shores of the Boeng Kak lake, but this area lacks Phnom Penh's charm.