Cambodia - Phnom Penh

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Phnom Penh is a fairly busy place and certainly not clean by any means, but it is the poorest country in south east asia afterall!
Lakeside is the backpackers haven. A side street from the main city next to the lake. I would recommend the Numebr 9 or Sister number 9 guesthouse. Sitting on the lake with very basic rooms but excellent common areas. A pool table, hammocks, tv with a variety of movies for your enjoyment, 24hr food and drink and the staff are pretty cool! Not to mention the lake that it sits on.
Lakeside has plenty of tuk tuks, restaurants and bars. The Drunken Frog is a good bar, more so if you go up the stairs to the roof. Don't be fooled that you have to go downstairs for the loo, that curious door in the corner is actually a toilet. Also the Lazy gecko is one of my favourite places to go for food with a selection of both Khmer and Western dishes and an addictively good chocolate fudge cake. Plus there's a small room cut off from the main restaurant with big cloth with lots of wicka 'egg chairs' where you can rent a movie and enjoy that chocolate fudge cake i mentioned. It also has a book exchange and clothing .
Riverside is also a good place to go on a night out if you fancy going further afield. We saw an elephant stroll down here once.
Everyone in Phnom Penh is very accomodating and helpful. I only ever had one piece of fruit thrown my way and it missed :D Once you learn their history you understand why. But that was the only incident in my whole stay.
There is a lot of poverty, particularly in the city and it may be a huge shock if you havn't seen these sorts of things that wasn't on a charity advert. I recommend going to Tuol Sleng. It was a torture prison during the civil war and has been kept the same as a museum. It still has blood stains on the floor. But be warned, make it the last thing you do in your day because you're not going to want to talk for awhile afterwards. Go back to the guesthouse then go out for a meal and some drinks to cheer up. Despite its depressing effects, it's worth seeing for cultural understanding.
Other places to see in Phnom Penh are the silver pagoda, royal palace (the queen looks shockingly like queen elizabeth in the pictures) and visiting the markets. Watch out for the smells though. Avoid the food areas in the centre of the markets, it gets gaggingly smelly and in the hot weather, and the tight packed busy market, its hard to get out quick for fresh air.

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