When tanks started rolling down the streets in Phnom Penh in 1997, there was only one place to go: the old brothel that housed a scrappy start-up of a newspaper called The Cambodia Daily.
It was my first proper job in journalism, a crash course in covering corruption, elections, assassinations, genocide and, over the days to come, a bloody coup sparked by a power struggle over the final collapse of the Khmer Rouge.
None of The Cambodia Daily staff, half Khmer, half western, went home for a week, venturing out to report on the battle and returning to put together the paper, then retiring to sleep in the dank cubicles where prostitutes once serviced peacekeepers.
We slept on the floor, having already used the