The first few days in Phnom Penh were so much of everything that when I think of them now they are only silent. The noises and the smells and the colours and everything was all so crushing and there was me, wide-eyed in a bubble, looking out at it all.

But things are starting to become familiar now. I moved into my apartment thirty-six hours after I arrived in Phnom Penh and isn’t it crazy, isn’t it absolutely mad how much of a difference it makes having a place to come home to? Holding a key to somewhere and knowing that when you get back there you have a space to hang your pictures and sprawl your clothes and set your books out – and isn’t it silly how that little thing changes a city?

The night before I moved in I went for a drink with a friend in a place a few blocks from where my apartment would be, in Tuol Tom Pong. Neither the tuktuk driver or myself had the slightest idea where the bar was so we wandered a little, through the early evening golden light as it passed over people closing up shops, people walking home from work, people going on a daily run, people, people, people. Chatter and laughter and I don’t know what it was about that area but I felt in the place in my chest where the real things are: oh, I want to live here.

I moved in the next day and I haven’t looked back. Sometimes it is still a little frightening, sometimes the newness of this place is overwhelmingly huge and there is nothing familiar about this city. There are no handholds.

But every day, I find, it gets a little closer to being home. The tuktuk drivers are starting to recognize me, I think, because they don’t call like pigeons to me as often when I walk to work in the morning. “Tuktuk, lady? Tuktuk, tuktuk, hey, tuktuk?” Tuktuk, tuktuk.

I am learning quickly: it’s ok to breathe in the first few blocks when I’m walking to the bus to work but after that the traffic gets too thick and the last block, when you walk past Tuol Tom Pong, you absolutely must not breathe in through your nose. The little girls in the bakery on Street 460 recognize me now, so we wave to each other when we meet eyes. Crossing Street 432 means waiting for a car or a great glut of motos to cross – let someone else do the work of forcing people to stop and then jump quick in behind them. Wait when crossing Mao Tse Tung Boulevard: there is a set of lights one street up, so eventually the traffic will slow and then you can cross the first direction, and it’s never so bad the other direction, not many people leaving the city at this time of day. Don’t bother walking up to the cross street, just cut across in the middle and hop over the barrier. Much easier.

I am growing bolder now, too. On Saturday I walked around by myself for most of the day, down to Street 488 for a shelf, through Russian Market just to see it, then up to Norodom Boulevard to a bookshop there. And after that I wandered and took photos, something I haven’t dared to do since I got here.

I love it here. The smells still terrify me – I almost gagged in Russian Market on the weekend, the meat sitting out was so strong – but the colours are becoming more colours that I know, and I am finding my favourite restaurants and bars and shops to look in on the walk home. It takes longer for things to reach the level of commonplace that is comfortable. But I think when it gets there it is all the more satisfying for the time it took.