Though the little island hotel was run-down, the owners were keen to please, and on 13th June they brought a coffee to my room to see if I was awake. They said breakfast was being prepared, and this turned out to consist of… a fish!

Once I was packed, the $1 boat charter took me to the shore, but my luck ran out, and the “bus” for Thalat had just left. I resolved to walk to Thalat, a distance of 5 km, but after 4 km a passing motorcyclist took pity on me and gave me a ride the last km.

The prices in Laos are very low compared with Thailand. As with other “hammer and sickle” countries I have been to, the government of Laos is keen to provide people with a constant reminder of the modern industrial and agricultural triumphs that they enjoy under communism, and the banknotes are covered with all manner of things which are likely more imaginary than real.

In the bus back to Vientiane I was sitting next to a retired pilot, who spoke good English, and was pleased to see that his country was now allowing independent travellers such as me to mix with the regular folk.

After checking into the same hotel again, for my last evening in Laos, I headed for a recommended “French” restaurant called Santisouk, which served me an elaborate and delightfully tasty plate of filet mignon with Asian veg, for about 1 USD!

I was up at 5 am on 14th June, and the hotel arranged a motorbike to take me to the airport. I hoped that there would be no unexpected bureaucratic problems with the visas, and that the officials were aware that independent travellers can fly to Cambodia. All seemed well when I checked in.

To say that Vientiane International Airport was “quiet” would be an understatement. There was little direct evidence of any aviation taking place there in recent memory. Eventually, however, a little tow truck, with smoke pouring out of the exhaust, towed a Russian Antonov An42 on to the empty apron, and a yellow and white Shell fuel truck filled up its wing tanks.

There were only 2 other obvious non-Indochinese on the flight – a Hungarian diplomat and his wife on “business”. I was apparently the only long haul tourist. Somewhat later than the scheduled time, we all wandered across the expanse of empty concrete to the plane. I had to wonder if this is the only airliner that Laos owns… Certainly the number of weekly international flights carried out by Lao Aviation could easily be done by a single aircraft!

Whether or not it was the only one, it appeared somewhat airworthy, and soon the aging Russian workhorse was spinning up its propellers and taking off south towards the southern Lao city of Pakse.

There was no sign of people getting on or off at Pakse, so it seemed that it was merely a refueling stop – or maybe a chance for nervous pilots to have a look round the plane to make sure nothing had fallen off. My Indochina guide book mentioned that Russian aircraft technicians in Vietnam tended to provide whispered advice not to fly on the aircraft that they themselves maintain.

From Pakse it was another 90 minutes to Phnom Penh. As the plane dipped down over the Mekong, I immediately started seeing the battle scars of the tragic little country I was about to land in. The one bridge over the Tonle Sap River was only half there…

The airport at Phnom Penh was no busier than Vientiane – clearly the arrival of the twice-weekly Antonov from Laos was a major event. I followed the instructions given to me in Bangkok, and looked for the agent that was waiting before immigration to assist with any difficulties. There were none, but it took a while… The agent took me to a money changing place, helped me to buy a ticket for the following day to Siem Riep, and after that I was on my own.

I felt a little nervous as I walked out of the terminal. I knew very little about Cambodia other than what I had learned from the tragic and moving film The Killing Fields, about journalists being caught up in the revolution 16 years ago, in which the Khmer Rouge came to power and began their horrific and insane experiment in social engineering.

I got a motorbike taxi to the Hotel Samaki in the centre of the city. This was the former Hotel Le Royal, where many war-correspondents apparently stayed (including those on whom The Killing Fields is based) while reporting on the end of the Vietnam War. I checked into a large but very run down room.

Along the corridor, another room had something quite incongruous on the door: a self adhesive Blue Peter badge – Blue Peter is a very long-running children’s TV program in the UK, which I adored as a pre-teen. I couldn’t begin to imagine how the badge got there.

I went for a walk, trying to get used to being in Phnom Penh, trying to keep a low profile, and conscious of the privilege of being one of the first foreign backpackers that many of the younger local people had ever seen. This is the poorest country I have been too so far this trip, and everything around me screamed that inescapable fact.

I soon reached the half destroyed bridge, and wondered about the state of a country that is in such dire straits as to lack the resources to rebuild the only bridge over the river alongside its capital city.

Next stop was the former French Embassy, which features heavily in the film The Killing Fields, being the place where some 800 foreigners took refuge, along with 600 Cambodian friends and family members, when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975. The Cambodians were ordered out, as a condition for the lives of the foreigners to be spared.

The Cambodians were never seen again. Under the Khmer Rouge, the penalty for associating with foreigners, speaking an foreign language, or just being educated, was death.

The 3 years of the Cambodian genocide were spelt out in gruesome detail at the Tuol Sleng museum, which I visited later in the afternoon. This was a former school, that the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture centre. I went round rather fast, partly since it was late in the day, but mainly because it was just too much to take in for one visit, and I started feeling a bit ill. I took a few photos and resolved to come back another day…

Emerging from Tuol Sleng, I felt a heightened sense of privilege, verging on guilt, to be a guest in a country that has suffered so much for so long. And the current government, though keen to draw attention to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, is still a totalitarian communist regime that keeps Cambodia isolated and impoverished, well over a decade after Pot Pot’s mass murderers were dislodged.

This place is already having quite an impact, and I’ve not even been here a full day yet…