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Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is a city of different faces - from rustic quiet streets of low-rise homes, to commercialised and modern buildings of rising heights. As the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh draws visitors from every corner of the world, many who are eager to find out how a country ravaged by the Khmer Rouge some thirty years ago can transform so quickly into a peaceful nation again.

Phnom Penh is a shoppers' paradise for exotic gifts and food. It is definitely one city that you must not miss out if you are touring the South East Asian countries of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.

Imagine a tart. Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and the Gulf of Thailand form the crust of the tart. Cambodia sits right in the middle of the crust. Draw the letter v within your Cambodia tart. The left line forming the v represents the Tonle Sap, a massive river which wells up like a kidney somewhere along the middle of this line. The Mekong River forms the right arm of the letter v. At the vertex of the letter v where these two rivers meet sits the capital Phnom Penh.

If you take the Mekong Express bus service which travels to Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Vietnam and even Thailand, your gracious bus steward will first tell you a little story on how the name Phnom Penh was derived before he hands you a bottle of mineral water, a disposable wet tissue towel pack and a box of freshly baked snacks.

The little fairy tale tells of a woman on a hill. The namesake means woman' and hill'. As to the fairy tale, I shall not rob you of the pleasure of listening to it being told by the gracious bus steward.

The story of the woman on the hill is definitely far more pleasing to the ear than the morbid accounts of the Pol Pot regime in the late 1970s during which men, women and children were separated and made to work on different farms.

Innocent people were accused of being the enemy', thrown into a school-turned-interrogation center known as S-21 at Tuol Sleng to be tortured in the cruelest ways with hot boiling oil or water, whole nail removers and body stretching before they were driven blindfolded some thirty minutes away to Cheung Ek Killing Fields in the rural area to be mass-executed and mass-buried. The remains of the clothes worn by children can still be found next to the two-meter deep burial pits on the site which also holds a white and gold pagoda-like memorial building with the skeletal remains dug out and preserved in glass cases.

Intellectuals and their families were

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