Patches of different decades are quilted across the city. The central market is from the deco days. Office buildings off the main road into the city are icy clean and airconditioned with freshly built machines shipped over from Japan. Four blocks near the water sit in the 1970s. On the far bank, it could be the eighteen hundreds.The overall effect of this chronological pastiche is that the city seems far more modern than New York or San Francisco. The buildings, having spent most of their beautiful years abandoned for communist camps, are now content to be old, eccentric and looked after.

At night there are only a few lit streets. The Christmas lights have been strung up carelessly and Angkor Beer signs sepia tint the old white men who use young khmer bar girls as crutches. Around 2 or 3, when the bars begin to close, the backpackers, sexpats and bar girls return to their (or each other’s) respective cocoons. The only people left are the middle aged khmer men who crowd together under blue fluorescent light in corner cafes where they play dominoes or cards and wave their hands at each other.

The city feels safe at night. Like water, lawlessness seeks its own level. There is a befuddling yet fully realized social contract that binds everyone. The prostitutes speak sweetly to the beggars and the tuk-tuk drivers sleep soundly on the seats of their motorbikes.