Another chunk.  Only 3 entries but fairly lengthy.  Interested to know if it's more interesting when more stuff happens, than when not so much does.  Or not.  Thanks for reading. 

6. 18:00  - 07/10/05

Back at the hotel, I was heading into the bathroom for a shower, still fully clothed when there was a knock at the hotel door, similar to my own tentative knock when I had arrived back at the empty room a few minutes earlier.  I pulled the door open and was greeted by the jarringly familiar face of the short, sweaty (forgivable as everyone’s a little sweaty here), Eastern European looking guy I had queued next to at immigration, the day before yesterday.
  Neither eastern European in accent, nor Clapham Junction geezer, nor well-heeled posh boy; Heath was from Melbourne, Australia.  He had just completed a two-year working visa in London, spray-painting cars and was doing this tour on his way home.  Easy to chat to as we had a good common sporting ground.  Well travelled, he had used London as a base for other ventures and was surprised my my relative lack of travel experience.  Later that evening as we chatted into the night, I learned he was from a large family, had left school at 16 for a trade, as his father had done - and pursued that as a career.  At times his lack of education told, although he was confident speaking to anyone.
  We headed down to the group meeting late after a prolonged discussion of the summer’s ashes series which hadn’t finished long ago.  Our tour guide had beckoned us through the room telephone.  The small hotel restaurant where we were all due to assemble was empty aside from a small table in the corner, around which sat five people.  We sat down to complete the insurance paperwork and introduced ourselves.  Marlo would be our leader.  Another Australian, mid-twenties, a little butch for a girl, exceedingly (perhaps over-) confident, I initially found her a little overpowering and dislikeably sure of herself.  Almost arrogant in her worldliness: as much a reflection of my own insecurity of my travel inexperience, and subsequent lack of confidence.  Always cheery, lighthearted, and ostensibly un-dislikeable, so it was probably an entirely subjective perception on my part. 
  Sitting to my left was Miriam, a Londoner, social worker, the only other female in the group: disappointingly unattractive.  Father-son Americans, Neil the son, was 27 - a charity administrator from Washington; his father, John, sold software, apparently successfully.  We quickly learned that the latter’s manner of conversing doesn’t often involve listening.  Neil, a Glaswegian, is our final member.  He looked like a young, dopily under-developed 18 year old, on his gap-year.  His healthily coloured tan, acquired on a tour he had just joined from - didn’t fit readily with his face.  Myself, Heath, and anybody we met subsequently who asked, were astounded to learn that Neil was in fact 25 years old.  Rather than just finishing school, he had completed a university degree, then a year at a call-centre to fund his travels.
   Having completed the paperwork, we headed out of the hotel for dinner at an streetside eatery.  I wasn’t made to feel particularly comfortable in my amateur, virgin traveller status.  Everybody expertly assumed their chopsticks and nonchalantly began speaking of all the exotic places they’d visited.  I felt awkward, cumbersome and crucified, looking around myself.  Was all this really for me? 
  Before returning to the hotel we went to buy some snacks from a modern supermarket for our bus journey south the next day.  Neil, Heath and I chatted as we walked.  Apparently Heath had hired and handsomely paid a local to give him a day-long extensive tour which went on late into the previous evening.  He seemed far more relaxed than me with his money, which wasn’t difficult.  When we finally went to sleep that night, we’d grown confident in taking the piss out of each other and more comfortable in each other’s company than a few hours’ acquaintance would normally suggest.   
 

A modest breakfast the next morning, then we piled into the van for the journey south.  A fascinating road-trip with a huge volume of other-worldly images, the type of which I thought I’d never see outside of a television screen.  Beautiful, children grinning incongruous - to western eyes at least - to their painfully basic shacks, slums, precariously ramshackle riverhouses made from corrugated iron and wood; waving at the flashy mobile cage of dumb white western people.  Us as much a curious diversion to them, as they were a remarkable focus for us. 
   These beautiful grinning children were the minority though.  Most people went about their day-to-day lives, not caring for the daily bypass of a modern, people-carrying vehicle.  Never was looking out of the window more wonderfully compelling.  Each minute offered an enriching new insight.
   The day’s travel across south Vietnam was broken up by a short boat crossing over a typically thick brown river.  We had to alight from our vehicle before it rolled onto the boat, and board on foot.  Stopping short of the barrier, we piled out of our vehicle to be besieged by begging locals who we pretended to be blind to.  Most horrific was an old paraplegic on a makeshift skateboard, moaning and rocking towards, bearing an appealing stub in our direction.  The briefest of glances was all I could stomach, before I studied my sandals again.  As quickly as the image was captured in my memory, it embedded itself so deeply it could quite possibly never leave.  Nobody in our tour group offered anything to the waif-like beggars as we strode past, towards the river and our vessel.  
   The captain of the boat proudly showed us the unsightly bulge in his upper arm where a bullet was embedded from the war.  He allowed Miriam to take control and wear his hat for a short period while we poked around in his small cabin.  She steered, uncertainly enjoying herself, waving at the group of people looking up at her from the vehicle deck below.  It took fifteen minutes to cross before we were greeted by a similar scene to the one we had left on the other side.  It turned the stomach, walking away, pretending to ignore them, obscenely safe in our cushy middle-class privilege.  Marlo, our guide, knew some of the children from passing through so often, and stopped to chat and play with a few.  Their faces peeled in delight as they recognised her.   
 
This evening we’re staying at a hotel in the town of Chau Doc, south-west Vietnam.  It has the most absurdly out of place 5-star hotel at its centre, which you can’t imagine gets any trade, but somehow must.  Our hotel is a short distance away. More modest, complete with a family of geckos (lizardy creatures which I’d never seen before, much to Heath’s amazement) prowling the walls, and numerous other bugs which will hopefully be dissuaded from our flesh by mossie-spray and plug-in deterrents.  Despite these, I’m not hopeful for my bite count, come tomorrow morning. 
   We’re going down to the hotel’s riverside restaurant for dinner in a short while.  Written this in the room with Heath wittering in my ear about whatever’s on the television, grunting in what I hope are the right spaces. 

7. 09:40 - 08/10/05

Yesterday evening’s dinner was pleasantly set on the floating boards of the hotel restaurant, on the banks of the Mekong Delta River.  Feeling more comfortable than at the previous evening’s meal, I made a better fist, (or perhaps claw?) of my chopsticks.  While remaining far from adept, I was marginally less self conscious of myself, and the possibility of slipping and accidentally taking someone’s eye out.  Afterwards we headed for the small town centre, and enjoyed a couple of beers at a relaxed streetside stall, watching a far gentler version of the Ho Chi Minh traffic go by.  A mellow, babbling brook rather than fearsome rapids.  Miriam began to grate with each drink, almost imperceptibly at the time: the initial blimp of a slowly rising agitation.  We mooched back to our hotel through the dark, sparsely lit, narrow and under developed street at around 10pm.

   Teenage schoolgirls here wear incredibly elegant white satin, skin-tight, body length dresses which locals say “show nothing yet reveal everything.”  And they carry themselves with a flawless dignity alien to British eyes more used to seeing schoolgirls portrayed and existing in the mould of Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard or Catherine Tate’s Lauren.  These look like delicate porcelain ornaments as they ride their bicycles with perfect posture, balance and control.
   Heath and I strolled through the manic, loud street market before breakfast.  It was a chaotic, vicious mess of images and smells, and by the time we needed to leap over puddles of meat blood, we’d seen enough.  A breakfast on the same bobbing riverside veranda where we enjoyed dinner, then we boarded a small boat responsible for originally shaky handwriting.  It will take us over into Cambodia in a few hours and is currently providing more wonderful riverlife images.  We were travelling in a fairly sedate fashion up until a paragraph ago, but have now accelerated significantly and are slapping off waves at such a pace I’m giving up writing because I doubt I’ll be able to understand what any of this says.  

8.  18:55   09/10/05

Our long riverboat ride was broken up at several remote points.  First a luggage checkpoint at a small riverside village where our bags had to be lugged off the boat into a small building where an x-ray machine and its guard proudly lived.  Local children waited on the small jetty, offering to exchange any remaining Vietnamese currency.  I took advantage, neither knowing or caring if I was getting good value.  They also pestered, unabashed, attempting to sell snacks and drinks as we sat under much needed cover, waiting for baggage clearance to proceed. 
A ten minute ride further down the river took us to the immigration cabins of the next village.  Regimentally uniformed, stuffy Cambodians sat behind desks in open rooms overlooked by portraits of their hugely respected royalty - who appeared an uncanny stylistic resemblance of the British monarchy, as if ours should be the ideal templates.  We each individually sat down with our completed forms across the desk from an official, their stamps at the ready, their cautious eyes flicking from our passport images to the real things.  It felt oddly like being scrutinised by the headmaster. 
    The oldest member of our group, John, had rather foolishly overlooked that he did not have ample space remaining in his passport for another full page stamp.  There was confusion, mild panic, muted irritation from Marlo, and subsequent delay.  We waited outside in our group, initially under the shade of a tree, until a local gestured that we should move away because we were in danger of being hit by falling coconuts. 
   Earlier in the morning, we’d been joined in our boat by a young Australian couple from Sydney.  They were in a similar position to Heath, returning from time spent working in London.  Mandy and Tom mixed with our group easily while we waited, chatting pleasantly in a small group of four: Heath, myself and the couple.  As the conversation dipped, Mandy apologised directly to me for not asking me what I did, in a way which indicated that she really should have asked earlier and it was terribly rude that she hadn’t.  I thought it cute, and the manner in which she had asked the question a little odd, but rewarded her with my tedious backstory.  I later learned that when she had asked her question Heath had swelled with a patriotic Australian pride.  That she had been so sweet, considerate of the quieter, marginal non-Aussie figure.  At that moment Heath had been proud of his countrymen, pleased to be returning home.
   Three hours after re-boarding from the checkpoint jetty - populated by yet more eager, young saleschildren, we arrived into the sweltering Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.  Stepping clumsily from the boat, restricted by heavy baggage and sweating profusely, we were predictably blitzed by the usual: tuk-tuks, hotels, tours, plain begging.  Somewhere in the melee, we managed rushed waves of goodbye, good luck to the Australian couple, before heading to our hotel a short step away from the river’s arrival port.  The new hotel was an improvement on the last; comfortable, insulated, good facilities, and a welcoming view over the Mekong river we’d spent most of the day travelling on.  Heath and I took keys to a twin room out of habit, leaving the Scottish Neil with his own again.   
   Miriam, Neil, Heath and I took a tour around the city’s centrepiece palace a short while after we had arrived and freshened in our rooms.  It was a grand, sparkling, golden affair, less impressive from the inside than out.  Walking around the grounds we met a pair of Irish women.  I began chatting with the more talkative, feisty brunette who evidently wasn’t wearing a bra.  Apparently they were doing a similar trip to ourselves, but had seen more of Vietnam, travelling down from the north, and preferred Hanoi to Saigon.  I spotted a young chap wearing an Everton football shirt, and chanced to ask him where would be showing the England game that evening.  Unfortunately he was far from scouse; American, had randomly bought the top and decided to follow the team when he was in the UK.  He didn’t appear to know much.
    We then took our waiting tuk-tuk to the bustling Russian Market in the centre of town.  It was insular, damp and narrow undercover.  Also it was near closing time and the stalls were packing away.  We didn’t browse that thoroughly and soon returned to our tuk-tuk.  Around our vehicle was a young, dramatically pleading woman cradling her screaming, scarcely clothed baby.  Like earlier beggars, she alternated between rubbing her hand in circles over her stomach and putting imaginary food in her mouth to indicate hunger.  Unlike others, she practically jerked her bawling child in our faces as we passed.  Literally forced to turn our cheeks, we tried not to look too hard, walked past her and boarded our tuk-tuk.    
   Our driver then took us to the Phnom Pagoda where we were dubiously charged a dollar on entrance by a shifty looking security man.  Monkeys lined the walls of the pagoda, eyeing us unsettlingly in the fashion of juvenile delinquents.  Miriam nervously stepped around one in a tight space.  They eyed each other.  It hissed, she shrieked, both smartly increased the space between each other.
   Riding around Phnom Penh, it feels as if the wealth gap is larger here than anywhere else we’ve been.  More obvious.  Whereas there was clearly abject poverty in Saigon and other places along the way, here there seems to be that - the mother and child outside the Russian market, another harshly indelible memory snapshot - and a wealthier, prosperous Range Rover driving band, who live in a simple comfort.  There seems to be little in between, as if a few steps of the ladder are glaringly amiss.  Which hints at the level of rife corruption. 

  
We returned to the hotel to freshen up in advance of a remarkable evening.  Marlo took us to a local restaurant a short walk down the street from our hotel.  Deep-fried honey fish made for an exquisite meal, then came the singing and dancing children at the front of the small, narrow room.  The restaurateur apparently orchestrates this performance weekly.  Around a dozen desperately poor children entertain a largely western audience with traditional singing, dancing, music and dress.  If you had described the scene to me, I would have scoffed at the suggestion I could have been moved by it.  As it was, I was taken aback by its undeniable sensory beauty.  The music, instruments and singing combined in a demanding yet measured way which didn’t take long to rhythmically tap into.  Tastefully decorated dress and make-up for the girls; who ordered intricately choreographed dancing in a businesslike way over their tiringly unruly partners: the unfailingly amusing boys.  Beaming smiles at the close of each dance made the heart melt entirely. 
    Donations to the children’s war-torn families are remarkable by still not being aggressively demanded: a meagre money box in the corner if you want to donate is not even passed round.  To anyone capable of human feeling, anyone wilted by what they’ve witnessed, to generously donate is as obvious as breathing.
    The dancing reflected, and perhaps exaggerated my sense of the Cambodian people.  Given the terrors of their extremely recent history - the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s regime, the constant dangers of liberally scattered landmines - it would be entirely understandable for them to be defensive, cautious, cold, nervous, especially the children.  Or for them to carry weighty chips on their shoulders for all that they’ve been subjected to.  Yet by and large, they are delightful, enchantingly warm, disarmingly open and generous people whose characters suggest nothing of their history.  Instead, a brave, unacknowledged, just-get-on-with-it attitude, which is forever cheerful.
    When my senses were regathered, I was jubilant to find that the England-Austria World Cup qualifier was on the television of most bars along the street.  Aside from the American pair - who seem to be opting out a lot - we headed back from the restaurant in the direction of the hotel, to a Vespa themed bar, where we witnessed a disappointing but functional 1-0 England win.  David Beckham was sent off again.  Neil was cheered to see a framed Glasgow Rangers shirt adorning one of the walls.  By the time the England match reached its conclusion, everyone in our group had gone back to the hotel apart from Heath and I, who still had an appetite for beer.  But I lacked cash.  Machines in a traveller targeted Aussie branch wouldn’t give me anything, but our hired tuk-tuk man took us down a quiet street to the distinctly unpromising looking door of what looked like some sort of telephone booth.  Regular enough looking cashpoint coming out the wall, but I was still highly sceptical.  Miraculously, it gave.  Heath and I were elated: we could drink!   
    We headed to another busy looking bar in what must have been the bar area, a short distance into town, away from the river.  Taking stools at the bar, we began speaking to ex-pats either side of us.  Heath to an extremely “dude”-like American who had something to do with the running of the bar; me to a Scottish maths lecturer at the university here.  A friendly chap, good conversation, but I was equally enjoying our proximity to the barmaids, who I was intrigued to note were decoratively manicured. 
    At 2am the bar closed and we went to another, the local Walkabout bar.  I was amazed the chain was this wide-reaching, unless of course it wasn’t part of it chain and coincidentally shared its name with the well-known Australian chain.  But, assuming it is actually an Australian chain as well as Australian themed, Cambodia is at least geographically much closer to Australia than the UK. 
    If increasingly blurry memory serves correctly, it was a large, dark, half empty 24-hour affair over two floors.  I somehow managed to persuade an initially reluctant, vaguely sad looking young, local girl to come and sit with us at the bar.  Using schoolboy French so broken it could have been strewn across continents, I tried to focus on what I was saying, and her face, rather than her quite incredible chest and curvaceous body.  Precisely what we spoke of I’m not sure.  Possibly too much of myself as she was less forthcoming, but I’m sure I learned a little of her.  Her name, for example - which I struggled to pronounce so avoided using and then forgot altogether.  And more.  Though I now fail to recall what. Somehow, through our numerous communication obstacles.. was that? ..did she?  I think we began flirting. 
   Aware of Heath’s isolation, we headed upstairs to play pool, by then not in the greatest state of sobriety.  Despite this, we made an average attempt at doubles.  A startlingly beautiful local introduced herself to us, and more specifically Heath.  Retiring from the pool games to different ends of the untended upstairs bar, Heath and I grew more familiar with our respective ladies - who had given no indication of being prostitutes.  I was more certain of my companion because of her original reluctance to join us.  She kissed in a strange pecking fashion, and expertly massaged my back.  After a time she went to the toilet and I stretched my legs with a walk to the balcony area.  It was light, morning, daytime, market stalls had opened below.  Shit.  How did that happen?  A glance at my watch confirmed it was little after 6am. 
    Headfucked by the revelation, I anxiously considered next moves and reported my finding of the globe’s over-hasty rotation to Heath.  He definitely wanted action with his friend but was going to book a room in a different hotel.  I was less sure.  I didn’t want to take her back to our room because I knew I was likely to get caught, busted, thrown off the tour, and off my next one which was through the same company.  But I didn’t want the expense of another room.  Heath had always seemed quite frivolous with his money, spending ludicrous amounts on that local guide in Saigon.  It wasn’t exactly the safest country in the world.  Would she have a terrifying father, or brothers?  Might they want to kill me if I..? 
    Heath and I blundered out of the bar, squinting into the daylight, and separated, taking tuk-tuks in different directions.  Mine was the same one which had taken us into this area of town several hours ago.  He had waited.  He’d waited?!  Since when?  How much would he want?  Oh, fuck, my head was beginning to fuzz.  I was still reeling from the discovery of it being morning already.  And there was the small issue of the girl sitting to my left, clinging to me as the tuk-tuk chugged onwards.  Could I..?  My brother’s last words before we last parted, “don’t do anything stupid” rang annoyingly in my head.  The risks were way too big, yet still I was burning for that amazing chest.  In all fairness, her face was passable, a squashy nose its obvious focus point.  Not on a par with Heath’s new friend.  But she did have perfect unblemished skin, a wonderful body, and those breasts...  Idiot, I reprimanded myself.  I asked her several times if she wanted to come back with me, hoping she’d have changed her mind and solve my nasty dilemma for me, hoping she’d have thought about it, said “rationally speaking, no, I’ve come to my senses and now I think about it I don’t think...”  But of course she couldn’t form a sentence anything like that, so she just clung to me pathetically and whimpered “yes,” a hand very close to my crotch.  She insisted that she did want to come back to the hotel.  She didn’t want to go home.  Fuck, I thought, as the tuk-tuk approached our hotel.  It was 6.30.  No, I couldn’t do it.  I paid the tuk-tuk man most of what I had left in my wallet for waiting, gave the remainder, probably not enough, to her, to get her home, and left.  She wasn’t happy, probably worried about any consequences of staying out all night.  A glance over my shoulder as I headed for the hotel door revealed that she had quickly clicked into sensible mode, rejecting the tuk-tuk we had travelled (possibly an inflated touristy tuk-tuk, although they all look the same to us) in search of another.  Watching her and her wonderful body independently swing away from me, I stepped sideways back through the hotel door. 
    Feeling a fuckwit, confused, ashamed of myself, a small shard of something way back in my marshland head applauded me, was pleased and righteous at my decision.  I passed an unmanned  reception (unmanned! nobody would have seen us) and pressed a button to beckon the elevator.  The regrets that I hadn’t taken her up were potentially much smaller than regrets I could have suffered if I had.  With that meagre consolation and a less coherent groan, I flopped into my bed.  
  
Waking not enough hours later at 11am, I opened the door to a grinning Heath.  He had considerately knocked in case I had company.  All had gone blissfully to plan for him.  As beautiful naked as she had been clothed.  And, apparently, a squealer.  I felt sharp jabbing jealousy as I slumped back into my bed and learned details.  He was disappointed in me, would have been so proud of me if I’d properly got my hands on those tits, mate! - and has been relentlessly pounding the regret into me since.  Still think I was right not to, but can’t help wondering what if..?  If, even in pissed, headswirling state, if I hadn’t been so painfully rational, sensible, boring, dull... then...  would I be me?
 
The pair of us have been flagging with dual hangovers all day.  I felt horribly ill walking around the Khmer Rouge torture prison S21 early this afternoon.  Like I could easily be sick at any moment, so was sneaking glances at discrete, obscured corners through necessary contingency.   They were barren, cold blocky buildings, like the crappest, derelict department of your old college, empty but for torture weapons, wasted beds, and galleries of images which didn’t serve to slow my somersaulting stomach.  I recovered a little with the aid of sleep on the mini-bus touring us around, and by the time we reached the surprisingly underwhelming killing fields - various small swampy ponds covering mass graves in a large field with a modest, tall stone monument at its centre - I was able to speak again without worrying it would agitate stomach acids. 
    The fields offered little indication of the recent atrocities it had hosted.  Children played on a makeshift rope-swing over a muddy puddle, giggling in hysterical delight when one was brave enough to pick his feet up from the floor. 
    As we left the fields for the mini van, I offered the remaining quarter of my stale bottle of water to a small gathering of children working in a neighbouring rice-field.  They had been magnetically attracted to the fence by the passing western tourists, like ducks to someone dishing out bread.  I offered the bottle to a small girl at the centre of the group and gestured that she should share it with her clamouring friends.  Retrieving my empty hand back through the wire fence, I was shamed to sense my resemblance to a zoo visitor.  
 
We’ve now returned to the hotel for much needed rest, intermittently exchanging further details and blurry memories of last night, while I write this.  We’re telling the rest of the group that we had returned to the hotel together at 5am, as we imagine our behaviour wouldn’t be looked on favourably, and probably not believed.  Plans for this evening run as far as dinner - I haven’t eaten anything all day and my stomach gurgles are growing violent - followed by an early night.  Tomorrow we have to meet in the lobby at 5.30am for an early flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second city.