Day 74, in which return to Phnom Penh

After a bracing dip in the Indepdence Hotel's pool, followed by a swim in the bath-warm waters of the ocean, we loaded our luggage into yet another taxi and set off for our last destination of our entire Big Trip: Phnom Penh. I'd expected to be sad to have reached this stage, with 74 days behind us and only a few more to go, but Cambodia doesn't reward the tourist who stays too long and I'm quite looking forward to getting home.

Driving back north was the usual hair raising experience. There don't appear to be many traffic laws in Cambodia, and it is left to the driver's discretion which side of the road he should drive on. Most choose the right, but this doesn't stop them switching to left when taking a left turn. Overtaking is also more an art than a science, and it is not at all unusual for a car overtaking a truck to find itself being simultaneously being overtaken by another car, while another truck comes the other way. Almost half of the attempted overtakes our driver made were abandoned halfway through, and of the remainder half ended with oncoming traffic blaring their horns and flashing their lights as they got dangerously close.

The road from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh is only single carriageway, with the lane in each direction being about the width of an average car, but this does not stop the enterprising Cambodians acting as though the other lane is simulatenously their fast lane, crisscrossing between oncoming vehicles and out onto the opposite hard shoulder just to get another car ahead, forcing cyclists and smaller cars off the road and simultaneously dodging the other cars as they do the precise same thing in the other direction. At several points so many people were overtaking that all of the vehicles found themselves travelling on the wrong side of the road. It would all be hilarious if we hadn't seen a crash scene on today's journey, a car smashed into a ditch and a startled woman with blood on her face climbing out with her baby in her arms.

And among all of this chaos are meandering herds of cows and clouds of mopeds and scooters, the latter serving as transport for the whole family: father driving, toddler in front of him holding onto the handles, the wife perched on the back of the pillion, one arm around the husband and another carrying a newborn baby, and a second toddler squeezed between her legs. Behind them might be another moto dragging a large plastic storage box on a makeshift trolley of recovered pram wheels, a man perched on the lid to protect their cargo. Other oddities zoomed by as we made our way to the capital, including a bride in full make-up and a strapless white sequinned dress driving herself to her wedding on a rusty scooter.

Phnom Penh is the only real city we've seen in Cambodia, and as Sihanoukville and Siem Reap are among the only other major settlements I would guess this is the only city in the country. It's sprawling and noisy and, while the guidebook claims it retains its colonial air, I have struggled to see it. I suppose bits of it look like an Arndale Centre, quite modern for these parts, but as your eyes drift upwards you can see shanty towns built on the rooftops: houses of bamboo, straw and plastic sheeting built three or four storeys above the capital's streets.

Thankfully we're staying in an elegant boutique hotel on the waterfront, The Quay. Our top floor room has fabulous views out across Mekong River, air conditioning and fully filtered tap water so it almost feels like we're not in Phnom Penh at all.

When we venture outside for a mooch around, tuktuk drivers flock around us like flies. "Tuktuk sir?", "Tuktuk sir?", "You want tuktuk?" ... it's baffling so many of them try even when they've seen others fail two seconds earlier. At 40 degrees centigrade (falling to 36 at night) it's simply too hot to waste any energy, yet still they seem to hope we turned down the first dozen tuktuk drivers on a whim. It makes me realise how desperate they are, and how utterly broken the economy is. You wonder what the government's economic policy actually is, beyond crossing their fingers and diverting development aid to their private accounts (corruption is a serious issue here and, although anti-corruption legislation is currently pending in the Cambodian parliament, the bill was drafted by the incumbent party and the opposition has been given just 48 hours to review it).

As we strolled back to the hotel this evening, a driver leaned over and shouted "Hey! You want I put you in a tuktuk and take you to the Killing Fields tomorrow?" I think that's the best pick-up line I ever heard.