Pochentong airport, Phnom Penh. Outside the terminal, the warm night air carries the scent of jasmine and open drains; from somewhere beyond the trees comes the sound of traditional Khmer music, rhythmic and exotic, and now a man is approaching us, holding out his finger-less hands, asking for money. Of course, a landmine victim; it’s hard to refuse him. Cambodia has rather a lot of them, a legacy of the Vietnam war and the dark days of the Khmer Rouge.

For independent travellers like myself and my companion James, arriving here can be an assault on the senses, but, as we soon discovered, Cambodia is also a country on the rebound, a land of gentle beauty, culture and warmth, despite its terrible recent past. Through darkened streets unlit by streetlamps, the taxi whisked us to our almost embarrassingly grand hotel: the Raffles Hotel Le Royal, a palatial relic of the French colonial era, lovingly restored. Where once war correspondents tapped out dispatches, now white-tunicked waiters scurried discreetly across its polished teak floors, and in the Elephant Bar, still famed for its happy hour, we ordered Singapore slings over a game of pool.

As we breakfasted on fresh croissants, a man coughed discreetly behind us: “Monsieur, your taxi is ready.” With just two days in the capital, and me in a wheelchair from gunshot wounds sustained in the course of my Middle East reporting for the BBC four years ago, we had decided that hiring a car and a driver for £18 a day was the most efficient way to get around.

Phnom Penh is a peaceful, low-rise city with wide, tree-lined boulevards, where whole families ride past on a single motorbike, their smiles natural and infectious. In the cavernous Central Market, we came upon “the Spider Woman”, a lady selling no less than six bowls of assorted creepy-crawlies. There were giant spiders, glazed black and shiny, their bristly legs protruding over the sides of the bowl; smooth green beetles, mustard-coloured crickets and a pile of something I am fairly certain was fried cockroaches. “If this is Cambodian cuisine,” James said, “I’m sticking with the croissants.”

When is best to see Angkor Wat

Gary Holloway wants to know when the weather will be favourable at Cambodia's famous ancient sight

• The best sights in South East Asia

Cambodia smiles through adversity

Gareth Scurlock travels overland by bus in a group of 12 and finds a balance of temples, beaches and remarkable people

Cambodia's genocide museum

The Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia is a shrine to suffering under the Khmer Rouge

• Cambodia smiles through adversity

• Captivating Cambodia

• Cambodia at peace

Backpacking in captivating Cambodia

Between ancient ruins and modern genocide, our gap goer explores one of SE Asia's most charming nations

• A year of living dangerously?

• Keeping your life ticking over on your gap year

• Taking a gap year without the gap

Related Links

• Cambodia's genocide museum

We were in for a pleasant surprise, though: at the Romdeng restaurant, an enterprise staffed entirely by trainee student cooks, Jamie Oliver-style, we feasted on grilled beef brochettes marinated in lemon grass, Khmer beef and peanut curry, then rice-flour crepes filled with caramelised banana topped with coco-nut ice cream, for £7 a head.

We certainly needed fortifying for what was ahead. Off a nondescript side street called Monivong Boulevard stood what was once a three-storey schoolhouse. It looked like any other high school in Asia: bare, concrete walls, flat roofs, palm trees in the courtyard. For four years in the 1970s, though, it became the Khmer Rouge’s most secretive detention centre, known as S-21, and the Cambodian government has since preserved it intact as the national Genocide Museum.

While Pol Pot’s fanatical cadres were busy expelling entire urban populations into the countryside, where more than a million perished, those deemed “enemies of the revolution” were brought here for imprisonment, interrogation and execution. In silence, we sat on the iron bedsteads in solitary cells where prisoners went through unspeakable tortures.

In bare, whitewashed rooms, I lost count of the thousands of black-and-white photographs of inmates who stared out, confused, terrified, probably at a loss as to why they were there. But the one that stays in my mind is that of the Australian tourist who sailed his yacht too close to the Cambodian shore, and was captured by Khmer Rouge gunboats and taken to Phnom Penh. His nationality did not save him; he, too, was tortured and killed.

This may sound a pretty grisly form of tourism, and I think it was one of the least enjoyable afternoons I have ever spent, but for Cambodians the genocide of the recent past is a key part of their history, and they want visitors to know about it. At the infamous “Killing Fields”, just outside the city, where a tall stupa has been erected containing countless skulls unearthed from mass graves, an inscription said it all: “The Khmer Rouge have the human form but their hearts are demons’ hearts.” MERCIFULLY, the Khmer Rouge is now history, and, after that, a visit to Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace was like a soothing lotion. Amid immaculate lawns and well-watered flowers, we strolled in the afternoon heat, gazing at the ornate red-tiled pagodas, with the capital’s traffic a world away beyond the high walls. Our guide led us to the Silver Pagoda, with its huge Italian marble staircase and 5,000 silver tiles, each weighing a kilogram.

It was time to head upcountry, to Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Indochina, via a short flight by turboprop plane in a monsoon downpour to the provincial town of Siem Reap. There, from the “achingly hip” Hôtel de la Paix, we rented a 4WD jeep and a guide who barely glanced at my wheelchair. “You want to go out on a boat and visit a fishing village on stilts? No problem.”

I liked that about Cambodians: perhaps because they have so many landmine victims of their own, they seemed to view the fact I could not walk not as an obstacle, but as a challenge.

In the relatively remote village of Kampong Khleang, two fishermen heaved me effortlessly into their boat for a chug round their world of stilted wooden huts, where life is lived 20ft above the waters of the lake. Then we shook off our shoes and sank into hammocks while rice and chilli were prepared for lunch, and the fishermen’s children took turns around the hut in my wheelchair.

Times recommends

• Confessions at 39,000 feet - your stories
• Europe's 20 best Christmas markets 2009
• Cruise passengers say: ‘We’ll tip when we want to’