I hadn’t been away for a while, and when it was time to do it all again it wasn’t difficult to choose where to go. My sister Emily was in China for two months, and planned to finish her trip with a week in Cambodia and Thailand. I was envious and keen to try China but without really enough time to spare. I decided to book another tour with Gecko Travel to Malaysia, and join Emily for the preceding week to check out Cambodia.

This would allow me to do the two areas of Cambodia that I wanted to cover – the Kymer Rouge history in Phnom Penh, and the temples of Angkor at Siem Reap – and also renew friendships with people I met in Thailand last time, before going on to do an adventure tour of Malaysia.

One of the main problems with travelling to South East Asia is the time it takes to get there. My flight, with Malaysian Airlines, was 11.5 hours, and that was to Kuala Lumpur, before I then had to make a connecting flight for Phnom Penh. Fortunately there was a seat missing in my row so there was plenty of space, and I discovered that the girl sitting next to me was up for a few dozen games of in-flight trivia. I seem to remember her name was Elle and she was a recruitment consultant or something like that. And she was terrible at in-flight trivia.

Finally arriving at KL airport, I waited for my connection to Cambodia and admired the building. As you find in a lot of fast-developing Asian countries, everything is brand new. Every facility that I could possibly need was on hand, and it was now that I should have purchased some US Dollars to pay for entry into Cambodia. But I didn’t, and I was not to realize at this point what a nightmare I was about to visit on myself.

I realised the money blunder on the flight from KL to Phnom Penh, and checked my wallet – 650 Thai Baht (10 pounds) and a British fiver. Oh well, there was nothing I could so about it so I waited to land and decided to figure it out with the immigration people then.

As we came into land, the cityscape below was a different world to the glitzy brilliance of Kuala Lumpur. Ramshackle is probably an apt description.

Before I got to the ordeal I was expecting at immigration, I was handed a small yellow leaflet by an official. It said:

While visitor is in Cambodia, you may be exposed to virus and disease which you have not experienced before. If you develop any of the following symptoms while in the Kingdom, seek advice from a doctor.

I scanned the list of symptoms. Got that one, and that one, and that one… crikey. Either I was infected with SARS already, or my cold and SARS have exactly the same symptoms. In any case, whatever I might have had, going to a doctor in Cambodia didn’t sound like a very appealing idea. I’d be better off prescribing myself a ticket on the first bus to Thailand.

Let’s not dwell on that though, because frankly I was just wasting time trying to delay having to deal with immigration. I grabbed the handful of forms and filled them in, and then approached the first of a line of people sitting behind a long desk marked ‘Visa issue’. My forms were wordlessly passed along from one person to the next, until I got to the most surly looking official, whose chair barely supported his generous bulk, and he said simply

“twenty dollar”.

OK, so here goes.

“I don’t have any US dollars with me, I’m sorry. I only have Baht.”
“Baht OK. 1100 Baht”
“No, I don’t have that much, only 500 baht”
“800?”

What? I paused momentarily, as I struggled with the idea that this guy was actually willing to negotiate over my visa fee, and also the fact that he seemed to think I was lying about only having 500 baht and that this was entirely normal.

“Look, I only have 500 baht, really. I need to go to a bank”

Looking decidedly grumpy, the man rose from his chair, which, had it been sentient, would have been mightily relieved. He led me through passport control, baggage claim and customs, without stopping at any of them, and out onto the taxi rank. There was a currency exchange window, where I finally managed to get my US Dollars.

Satisfied, the visa man vanished, leaving me relieved and somewhat confused. I made a few tentative steps in the direction of a taxi, and suddenly realised that not only was I not officially in the country yet, but I hadn’t cleared customs and didn’t even have my bag, which was probably still on the carousel.

I dashed back into the airport, went backwards through customs, baggage claim and immigration, successfully convincing the staff at each location that I should be allowed back, and then did them all properly. Imagine trying that at Heathrow.

Getting a taxi, all I knew was that I was staying at the ‘Number 10 guesthouse’ which was, according to Emily’s friends, next door to the ‘Number 9 guesthouse’. I imagined an entire city in which all lodging places were named in a similar vein, and hoped that wasn’t the case, because all I gave the taxi driver by way of direction was a scrap of paper with ‘10’ written on it.

The fact that it worked was obviously testament to the fact that there was only one guesthouse called number ten. The room was basic, no hot water, no air con, but good enough, and my bag was rapidly dumped in favour of a small day pack. I went for a walk.

Around the lake area where I walked, evidence of the poverty of the country was all around. Buildings held together with a lattice of rough wooden scaffolding, the roads a dusty throbbing mass of motorbikes, heavily laden bicycles and pickup trucks.

Back at the hostel, I took a seat on the deck by the lakeside, and read my book for a few hours, until Emily and Liz arrived. Emily, my sister, had been travelling China for two months and would be returning home to London from Bangkok in a week’s time. Liz is a friend of Emily’s from secondary school, and would also be joining us for the trip to Bangkok, before heading off to the islands.

For dinner we selected a restaurant close to the hostel, and I had a delicious beef & ginger dish while Emily and Liz managed to confuse the poor waitress by inventing new dishes and ordering three different drinks.