Walk down any street in Phnom Penh and the chances are it won’t be long before you stumble across a shop, stall or mobile vendor selling noodles.

The mainstay of the Khmer diet, noodles provide a quick, nutritious and cheap meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Made from wheat or rice flour, they are blanched, fried and fermented to create an overwhelming choice of noodle dishes.

The origin of the humble noodle is of course Chinese, not Khmer, arriving in the country at the beginning of the last century with a wave of immigrants. Many of the noodle shops are still run by descendents of the original Chinese who settled there.

A sizeable Vietnamese population in Cambodia also serves up pho – pronounced fur – their own particular type of beef noodle soup.