Today, the railway still ferries valuable cargo across the Canal Zone including curious day-trippers on jungle-thick journeys past man-made lakes, locks and causeways.
On the first night, we camped far into the jungle beneath tarps and ate barbecued beef marinated in lime juice in the company of a man who lives off the land and travels only by canoe.
He would tread, a little bird-like man with hands folded and head bowed, along narrow paths that threaded through the jungle-forests of central Cambodia.