WHOLLY INAPPROPRIATE ON A WHOLE RANGE OF LEVELS

"There's enough material in Phnom Penh to keep you going for a lifetime...which can, of course, be quite short over there if you fuck up with the wrong people."
- Raoul.

It is typical of the way things work in Phnom Penh that i only met one of my fellow journalists at The Paper after working here for two months. And that was only because i ran into him in a bar. He is obviously from the classic school of journalism - one of those hacks who does all his writing in bars and only comes into the office to claim expenses. Still, i figure if you're going to learn, learn from the experts.

And there is no shortage of bars in Phnom Penh in which to hone my journalistic skills. So far i have worked my way through the first half of them, along with the first half of that axiomatic expression, "We live and we learn". I may be in a foreign country, but a lot of the terrain i am covering is, sadly, familiar ground. Like doing Wholly Inappropriate things whilst inebriated.

I should have learned long ago that tranquillizers and alcohol are not one of life's more scintillating options. I'm not sure why our lifestyle editor was handing them out in a bar in the early hours of the morning, but from what i understand, it was because somebody had, Wholly Inappropriately, handed them to her. My job was to hand them on to somebody else - anybody else - like a hot potato. Rather than wash them down with my eleventh Black Russian. I'm not sure what happened after that, but the Cambodian girls who work in the shop downstairs from my apartment reported that my girlfriend brought me home at 4am, which is strange, because i don't have a girlfriend. Other than that, i know for a fact that i sent some ludicrous text messages, including one to a very nice American girl saying i wanted to bite her, and another to a work colleague asking him to accompany me in search of the happy pills. I don't remember anything at all from 2am, after the Stilnox kicked in, until 5am, when i managed to bring myself around. But i am pretty sure i came home and frightened my (probably now former) flatmate Zoë as i crashed about the apartment, taking powerful stimulants, while attempting to persuade her to accompany me to the Kambol shooting range to pose naked with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

"That is Wholly Inappropriate, on a whole range of levels," is what she said.

Looks like it is barge-pole range for me with Zoë from now on.

THROWN BY THE WHITE HORSE

With the mercury pushing a hundred in the old money it's not a good day to be stuck at the track sporting a hangover, no money, and severe bruising. Another motocross bike roars angrily past over the humps, its rider holding on grimly, clearly barely under control. I take a step back, firing off a few frames as the sound of the two-stroke drills into my skull. I’m spattered with mud and wet with sweat. And still labouring under the illusion that being a photojournalist is a somehow glamorous occupation. I can’t wait for them to spray my lens with champagne so I can get the hell out of here, back to lakeside, and book up a jug of beer. But the final race is five hours away. As another rider roars by i'm covered in yet another layer of fine brown dust. God, i need a drink. But water costs money.

Living in the cheap and somewhat notorious district of lakeside has its advantages, for sure. My four-dollar room has a view over the mosque and the lake, and of course the swimming pool at the four star hotel around the corner is an added, if illicit, bonus. No-one there will question a barang in his underpants. The lakeside food is cheap, and i can run a tab. But there are problems. One is the water pressure, or lack of it. Three days now without water in my room. The other problem is the drugs. They are simply too cheap.

While the sale of drugs and women is endemic in Phnom Penh, it is completely out of control at lakeside. Around the city, a moto or tuk tuk driver will ask, with descending likelihood of success, if you want a tuk tuk, if you want a massage, if you want to go to the Killing Fields, if you want gunja, if you want a woman, or if you want to go to the shooting range and fire at a pig with a rocket-propelled grenade. I wonder how an average tourist’s tour of the city would go if they simply accepted at random every outing a tuk tuk driver proposed. It would be an interesting day, to say the least.

But out at lakeside, the tuk tuk and moto drivers dispense with these frivolities. Coming back home from a pubcrawling boozefest, I stumble past these touts as they lie in wait, lining the narrow lane, with its combination of makeshift bars, third-world Khmer squats, and the open corridors of guest houses facing out onto a polluted lake.

“You want ganga? I have. Skunk. You want cocaine? Ecstasy? China white?” The moto driver shadows me with his urgent whisper, as I head past The Wanderer towards Moskito Bar. Out on the guesthouse boardwalks, backpackers lie on their couches and hammocks, whiling away their nights in a never-ending carousel of marijuana, cheap beer, and cheaper women. The idea that someone might want a lift out of lakeside is not high on this moto driver’s radar. “You want Ecstasy? I have. Yama? I have.” And, judging by his endless palaver, the immensity of his pharmacopeia stands in stark contrast to the paucity of his vocabulary. Moskito Bar is quiet, a couple of black guys drinking to hip hop. So i decide to investigate the depth of this tuk tuk driver's stocks.
“You have ketamine?” I inquire.
“Yes, yes, I have, you want?”
“No. I’m never touching that shit again in my life. What do you think i am, crazy? How about amphetamines?”
“Yes, yes, I have.”
“What about dimethyltriptamine?”
“Yes, yes, I have.”
“MDMA?”
“Yes, yes, I have.”
“Magic mushrooms?”
“Yes, yes, I have.”
“How about a bag of dust from the surface of the moon?”
“Yes, yes, I have.” I am beginning to doubt his sincerity. I know, for instance, that what the locals sell here as cocaine is either heroin or ketamine laced with speed. As reported in the newspaper only recently, a couple of Western tourists found this out the hard way. The two men were found dead in their hotel room, bleeding from the nose, with a packet of pills “to cure erectile dysfunction” and a pile of white powder beside them. There is a slight difference between the diluted cocaine of New York and London and 100 per cent pure horse. A difference which can put a real downer on a fun night out. Or a gay night in, as the case may be.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Come, come, I show you. I have room. You see.”
Ever curious, I follow him into the darkness, down the winding back lanes of Boeung Kak, past the high concrete wall of the mosque.

We come to a rickety walkway over the water, between wooden-walled huts, where the drug dealer holds his mobile phone down low behind him, barely illuminating the broken planks and gaps in our path. In dim living quarters people are lying about on mats or cooking on the floor. A skinny dog brushes past my legs. Through a window, lit by a low watt bulb, an old man is drawing a bow across a strange, tall, stringed instrument in meditative melancholy.

The dealer stops for a moment to shake free a short, loose plank next to a flimsy door. He reaches into the cavity and removes a plastic shopping bag. He pushes open the door and motions me inside. An old lady nods at us and steps outside the room, which is about the size of an ensuite bathroom, but with fewer amenities. He picks up his young child and points to a dirty mattress on the floor. I sit. He puts the child on his knee and opens the plastic bag, handing me a formidable bag of marijuana. “Skunk,” he says. I open it and take a whiff. It is better than most. Most of the ganga here is hay, but some is so strong as to be positively hallucinogenic. This is export quality shit. The usual hay is for the domestic market. Next, he produces a pile of small plastic bags, densely packed with various substances. He introduces them to me one by one. It is an extensive supply. Some fat crystals of meth. Brown, flat circles of opium. A thick bag of amphetamines. Red yama pills. Some other pills, which he claims are ecstasy, but could be anything. Some blocks of hashish. Another bag, full of soft white flakes, which he says is cocaine. It does look like cocaine. But being relatively naïve when it comes to illicit drugs, i am unable to put my finger on what exactly this is. I try putting my finger on it anyway. It tastes bitter. Who knows? I am but an innocent abroad.

“How much for the crank?” i ask.
“Twenty dollar.”
“Ten?”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“OK.”

Outside the door, he hands the money to the toothless old lady and hides his stash back behind the broken plank.
“Where you go now?” he asks.
It’s about 1am. Some friends will still be out drinking cocktails, pursuing various depravities at Pontoon, the floating nightclub on the river, tethered to the ex-casino boat Mekong Queen.
“Pontoon.”
“I drive you.” He goes inside and picks up his child. We walk back through the squalid labyrinth, back to the main lane, back amongst these missionaries, mercenaries and misfits. His moto is outside The Wanderer. He sits the boy up front, where he leans happily on the handlebars. I slide on the back and we set off to riverside, and the thrilling frivolities of Pontoon.

Heading past the big roundabout at Wat Phnom, the daytime haunt of elephants, monkeys, tourists, and four statues of the Buddha, he suddenly comes to a halt. On a dark stretch of road.
“What’s up.”
“No gasoline sir.”
“You’ve run out of petrol.” I sigh, and look around. We’ve just passed a couple of massage parlours and a supermarket, but up ahead all is quiet. From here to Pontoon is maybe a five minute walk, and I’m pretty sure I know the way. I hand him a couple of thousand riel. “Get yourself some fuel, champ. I’ll walk.” I head east, towards the river.
After walking about twenty metres, I run into a group of four Cambodian men. They launch into a familiar spiel. “You want ganga? You want girl?”
“No, thank you.” I try to keep walking, but one of them moves in front of me while another grabs my arm. This is unusual. Touts here hassle you relentlessly, but they rarely touch you. Unless you pay for it.
“Good ganga. Skunk.”
I shake my head no. “Awtay, awtay, awkun.” I point down the street. “Sohm toh. Pontoon. Leah heouy.” Having made my goodbyes, they release me and I walk on. But something is wrong. My wallet is missing from my back pocket. I turn around to see one of the men, about ten metres further down the street from the others, hiding something under his top. I walk towards him. He breaks into a run. I run after him. He circles back towards his friends. I start chasing the pickpocket around and around in circles, while yelling “Police!” but of course there is nobody to hear. His mates do their best to get in my way. There’s only about forty dollars in the wallet, but, having consumed quite a few pints of beer, I’m more worried about the happy powder. What will the girls at Pontoon say? They will be unimpressed.

The thief is screaming and shouting as I chase him in an ever-diminishing spiral. Suddenly one of the men appears in my peripheral vision, off to the right, running at me, swinging something. It hits me hard on my left shoulder. Really hard. As I stumble, the thief throws my wallet onto the bitumen. The gang runs off up the street, into the dark. I drop to my hands and knees, winded, and pick up the wallet, emptied of its cash. I put a hand to the wound on my shoulder, feeling the damp stickiness of blood. Bastard, I mutter. That moto driver set me up. I stagger ruefully to my feet and start the long walk back to lakeside.

So this morning i am sore, sorry, and stuck at the motocross. My left shoulder bears a huge bruise and a nasty cut from the chain or buckle or whatever the hell it was that stopped me. The nice woman from the internet café, who treated my wounds at lakeside last night, suggested I go to the doctor - but of course, my medical insurance expired three days ago. And the thieves just took the last of my money. You go to police? she asked, as she applied the antiseptic.

Hmm. I can just picture it. The police will ask me what was stolen.
“Apart from the cash? Well, they took my drugs, didn't they, the bastards.”
“Can you give me a description?”
“Sure. It was about a gram, white powder, allegedly amphetamines.”
“No. Of your attackers.”
“Oh. Well, there were four of them. Four men. Cambodians.”
“What were they wearing?”
Here I would pause to search my memory.
“Well, as I said, it was dark – but they were clearly wearing way too much makeup. And miniskirts. Cheap jewellery. And the one who took my wallet had on a halter-neck blouse, in a rather fetching turquoise. He was carrying a chain-mail handbag.”

I wince as the internet girl rubs some tiger balm on my bruise.

“No, I don’t think I’ll be going to the police,” i say.

Damn those ladyboys.

CAMBODIAN RED

for Doctor Abigail

MARCH RECIPE OF THE MONTH
Lime marinated beef salad. Served on a banana leaf to save on the washing up. For those with an eating disorder (i.e. vegetarians) this recipe is simply ideal. It's so easy to spot the meat - that'll be the red stuff - and push it to one side to create a luscious peanut salad. And it's as close to a vegetarian meal as anything you're likely to find in Cambodia.

PREPARATION TIME
Allow 30-40 minutes for marinating and then a minute or two to simply toss together, like two homos in a tryst.

INGREDIENTS
Serves 2
200g beef (or kangaroo if you are in the lucky country) sliced thinly
1 stalk lemongrass, sliced thinly
1 chilli, sliced thinly
100g bean sprouts
50g roasted ground peanuts
1 clove garlic
juice of 3 limes
palm sugar, salt and fish sauce to taste
mint and basil, roughly shredded
4 leaves saw mint, sawed into 1cm pieces

SUGGESTED WINES
Forget the wine. This is the tropics. Try some French Baïta rhum and ginger cordial with a slice of lime over ice. Get a couple of these going while you put some vinyl on the stereo. I recommend Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band's 1969 classic Trout Mask Replica.

METHOD
Slaughter a bullock. Procure the rest of the ingredients from the market, and take a ride home through the narrow streets in a cyclo, soaking up the smells of the street stalls and the fresh tropical rains.

Combine the lime juice, lemongrass, garlic, saw mint and chilli to create a marinade. Season with salt, sugar and fish sauce to taste. Having created the marinade, congratulate yourself by mixing another ginger rhum. Or two. Put the beef in the marinade and leave it for 30 to 40 minutes. This, along with the washing up, is the easy part. Turn up the stereo and wander out onto the balcony, rhum cocktail in hand. See what's going on down there on the street, beneath the bougainvillea. Those Cambodians, what are they up to? And why don't they have a word for "vegetarian"? Hmm. Life's complexities are many. Too fucking many. Flop in the hammock and roll up some Cambodian red. Then let the lime juice marinade go to work work on the beef as the rhum and gunja goes to work on your brain.

After half an hour or so of cooking remotely from your hammock, wander, dazedly, back into the kitchen and flip the record. As the ceiling fan circles overhead, drain and squeeze the meat to remove all the juice. Toss with basil, mint, coarsely ground peanuts and bean sprouts. Serve it on the aforementioned banana leaves, on a rattan table on the terrace, topping up with ground peanut, basil and mint. Garnish with searing circles of chilli.

You realise the gunja has done its work properly as you tear into the fresca meat. The red Cambodian sun sinks at the edge of the street, down by Heart of Darkness bar, as the sounds of the tuk tuks and vendors float up from the street. Another long warm tropical night is in store. It might be a good night to get out on the streets, once the moon comes up. Maybe wander over to Fly for a blue margarita and a swim in the lap pool, or maybe even Sharky bar.

Or maybe roll up some more red.

MONKEY MAGIC

The bumper sticker reads: "Honk if you want to see an AK47 fired out a car window." The black Hummer hums along just ahead of my moto driver down Preah Monivong Boulevard. And i do mean just ahead: my driver's handlebars almost scrape the rear quarter panel as he weaves along looking for a few empty centimetres of passing space. I have a sudden flashback to the time i was driving my '62 Spitfire down the Mitchell Freeway, just behind a biker with "Coffin Cheaters" emblazoned across the back of his jacket, when my horn suddenly came on for no apparent reason and stayed on. I mean, i can laugh about it now.

I've told my driver i'm in a hurry, and he is obligingly honking and passing everything in sight as he speeds along the wrong side of this four-lane road. We pass the Hummer without incident, then almost have a head on collision as we turn left into oncoming traffic, but of course i'm used to that by now. All the drivers cut the corner as they turn, just so they can ride directly into the oncoming traffic on the steet they are turning into. It's a kind of national sport. I rummage around in my pocket to find my mobile, and punch a Recently Dialled Number.

"Is that Mean Harean?" i ask, as the driver squeezes at high speed through an impossible space between a rubbish truck and a street vendor. The female voice on the end of the line says something i can't make out. There is a disconcerting echo on the phone. I assume that i am speaking to the head of HR, so i persevere. "It's Mark Roy here. I'm running a little late. But i'll be there soon." My words echo back to me, jumbled up with a heavily accented voice which for all i know could be quoting me the price for an ounce of gold in Borneo. "Yes, ten minutes, i'll see you then," i say, and hang up.

You might think it a little loose, taking off to a foreign country with almost no money on the off chance of securing a job with an international daily newspaper. And then turning up to your interview late, and without a CV. But fuck it. This town doesn't make it any easier. I mean, you'd think that any premises advertising 'quality colour laser printing' might in fact be able to produce just that, rather than a faded, striated black-and-white mess that looks like it was spat out of a well-used 1970s photocopier using dirty dishwater as toner. Which, in all likelihood, it was. And when you leave your one-and-only business shirt with the laundry to be washed and ironed two days earlier, you would hardly expect to be still standing there, twenty minutes before your job interview, while they decide to switch on the iron. I stand and watch. There is little else i can do.

"Where you go?" asks a moto driver standing nearby.
"Well, i am supposed to be at the Phnom Penh Post by 11a.m," i say resignedly. I glance at my watch. It's 10.45, and the office is on the other side of town. "Preferably wearing a shirt."
"Ah, yes, i know where that is. We get there no worries."
This sounds promising. "It's on the corner of Sihanouk and Sothearos boulevards," i advise.
"Yes, yes, i be there many times." He waves his hands dismissively. Obviously it won't be a problem.

So it comes as something of a surprise when five minutes later he stops just a few hundred metres from the laundry in front of a large, yellow art deco building, just east of the shrine at Wat Phnom.

"What the fuck is this?" i ask politely.
"The Phnom Penh Post Office," he says.

They have recently introduced helmet laws in Cambodia, for which the moto driver is grateful as i smite him on the side of the head.

The new helmet laws here only apply to drivers, not passengers. Moto taxi drivers carry one helmet and one helmet only, and that's for them. It's a curious arrangement, but one to which you soon become accustomed. Just as foreigners can be pulled up and given a ticket for riding a motorbike during the day with their headlights on, so Khmers blithely ride about at night with their lights switched off with no fear of being pulled over by the police. There is an ineffable and arcane logic to it. Ah, you've got to love the place.

Against all odds, the job interview goes swimmingly, and the CEO shakes my hand and gives me a ticket to their work function at the Foreign Correspondents Club. The function is being held this Friday, and will include free food and drink. This is a good thing, especially when you are down to your last forty dollars. Remind me to wear clothing with capacious pockets. I'm living on about $12 a day coming in through eBay. My room is $4, a meal is around $1.50, and a litre of water is $1. It's a pity the pinball machine deal fell through, because that would have brought some welcome pocket money. But people here will go around stealing integral components, like transformers. It can't be helped. $12 a day means i can live. Not comfortably, by any means, but i can live.

Then this morning i realise i have $12 Australian coming in per day - while all my costs are in US dollars. Ouch.

It's time to cut costs, i decide. Who says i am not a rational human being? First, i decide to sleep all day so i won't spend any money. At nightfall, i set out on foot and find a cheap Khmer eatery across the road from the casino at Boeung Kak. Stainless steel tables, plastic chairs: above us only sky. The menu has an English translation of sorts, offering such delicacies as sautéed frog with red curry pasted, and that perennial favourite, sweat and sour pork. I'm tempted to try the fried swamp cabbage with chilli, hold the eel - but instead i opt for a very tasty chicken noodle soup for a dollar. On the table is a big jar of sliced garlic and chilli and some fish sauce. Mmm. I lash out on a glass of sugar cane juice.

On the way home i am inexorably drawn to the Boeung Kak Drinking Shop. The name "Drinking Shop" piques my curiosity. I walk in and browse the shelves. Only $6.50 for a whole litre of rum? How long has this been going on? A shot of rum here is a dollar fifty, and there are around thirty-three shots in a litre. Yes. This should cut my costs considerably.

And with cigarettes at only fifty cents a packet, it's almost worth taking up smoking again. I could save a fortune.

The next day i'm gazing, as usual, out the window of my tiny fourth floor room, across the mosque to the lake, when i see a troupe of six monkeys scampering across the rusted corrugated iron roofs. They look in windows and frighten the backpackers, jumping up and down excitedly, before clambering along some electrical wiring to the roof directly below. The monkeys just wander about wherever they like, doing whatever they like, with no-one to disturb them. They drop onto a balcony and begin messing with a washing line. One of them pulls down a bra, pulls it over his head, and then wraps it around his chest. He gets bored of this, drops it, and they jump onto an adjoining roof before dropping out of sight between the buildings. Monkeys. Ha. Funny. I pour a couple of fingers of the Baïta Rhum, add some orange juice, and knock it back. Breakfast of champions. Now, time for a swim. Not in the lake, of course - it is polluted beyond redemption. But the freeflowing antics of the monkeys have given me an idea. I pack a towel and walk around the corner to the 4-star Phnom Penh Hotel.

I stride into the lobby like i own the place. Always stride into the lobby like you own the place, i decide. From now on this will be my mantra. Stride into the lobby like you own the place. The air conditioning is simply luscious. I bet they even have hot running water here. And cakes! I walk by a glass display cabinet filled with fancy cakes. I haven't seen a cake since Brunei Airport. I walk down a long corridor, past the entrance to the casino, then circle back past some very expensive-looking shops on an almost impossibly shiny polished wooden floor. I see a sign pointing to a spa and health club, so i meander in that direction. I've brought a small plastic bottle of iced tea with me, filled, of course, with French rum. Because the more of it i drink, the more money i save. Brilliant. Next to the entrance to the spa is a sign in elegant brass lettering, pointing up a flight of stairs, which says simply: "To swimming pool".

After a few laps in the cool turquoise water, i hop out and lie back on the sun lounge. I figure i must be saving a couple of hundred dollars a day lying here. I sit up for a sip of iced tea. Yes, one could get used to these cost-cutting measures.

THE LOST PINBALL MACHINES OF KAMPUCHEA

I find the dust-covered, rusted Williams Whirlwind beneath a crumbling vinyl tarpaulin under a house in the back streets of a Cambodian port. From all accounts, it is the last remaining pinball machine in the country. I'm trying to figure how cheaply i can buy it and transport it across country to Carlo's rooftop bar and grill, 550km away in Siem Reap. The Whirlwind's owner is in gaol. Perhaps a carton of cigarettes would be useful.

I returned to Sihanouk Ville from Kampot after learning of the possible existence of the pinball machine from a seasoned Dutch traveller i met in a bar. To the uninitiated, this may seem to be an almost random pursuit - to travel the South East Asian highways in search of pinball machines - but i can assure you this strange compunction has a completely rational explanation. Well, almost.

No, it's not that i am a pinball wizard, nor am i even much of an aficionado of the silver ball. It's just that, well, i have this friend, Carlo. Carlo has Special Needs.

I travelled with Carlo and Raoul in Bangkok during the 2006 military coup. Before he took off to Cambodia to find work as an industrial designer. Like many Westerners who take off to Cambodia with the intention of finding recognised employment and building a stable career, Carlo instead opened a bar. As the owner of the rooftop bar and grill XBar Asia in Siem Reap, Carlo now indulges in the depravities of pig racing, ice lugeing and vertical skateboard riding while screening open-air movies and hosting touring rock bands. But the simple pleasures of pig racing and hosting American rock stars is no longer enough for Carlo. His insatiable thirst for decadence drives him to want more and more. His jaded pleasure centres can now only be assuaged by the procurement of not one, but two pinball machines.

"You coming to Cambodia?" Carlo asks. "Pick us up a couple of pinball machines on your way from the Thai border, will you?" Which, on the face of it, seems a reasonable request, and one that any self-respecting mezzano such as myself would normally have no problem accomplishing. But there are certain complications.
Firstly, the Khmer Rouge relentlessly destroyed every trace of Western domination that they came across during their four-year reign of terror. And a pinball machine is a classic symbol of the Western hegemony, with all the bells and whistles.

Secondly, the few machines that managed to survive the Khmer pinball purge, and most of those brought in subsequently, were snapped up three years ago, when a travelling American entrepreneur scoured the country's dens of iniquity and bought them all up, selling them to collectors on eBay at great profit.

Thirdly - just how popular can coin-operated machines be in a country that has no coins?

While getting steadily more drunk in the downstairs bar of Blissful (with its notice that promotes 'No Drugs No Weapons No Prostitutes' - clearly a sign that one man's Bliss is another man's Boring) i stumble, quite literally, upon a lead. I'm drinking the strangely sweet and potent Mekong whiskey, which at a dollar a shot represents an attractive brew for the travelling cheapskate. Dieter, my inebriated companion, regales me with tales from the old days, back in the nineties, after the UN-sponsored election brought some semblance of normality to the country in 1993. From politics the conversation follows a natural course, flowing like the Mekong, to pinball machines.

I know where there might be a machine, says Dieter. There was this bar in Sihanouk Ville - it's owner was thrown in gaol a couple of years ago ...

I grab a bus the next morning, and wind up with a room upstairs in a wooden hut on Otres Beach, south of the port town. Here i sit and write, lounging on a beach chair sipping vodka and coconut juice and talking to passing French women in bikinis. But this cannot sway me from my mission. I finish my drink and get on my hired moto.

The Corner Bar is on Victory Hill, a sleazy part of town near the port, a balls-out-rock'n'roll kind of street packed with girlie bars and the kind of sad, misbegotten perverts that give expats a bad name, i.e., 'sexpats'. The bar upstairs, where the alleged pinball machine was last sighted, is being refurbished. The new owners know nothing about any pinball machines.
The previous owner left a couple of years ago, says one of them.
I heard he was thrown in gaol, says the other. Ask Johnno downstairs, he might know.

Johnno Downstairs is out, gone to the Embassy to pick up a delivery of imported food. He will be back in an hour, the bar girl tells me. I wander the street in search of some food. I find instead a Caucasian man, sprawled on a piece of cardboard in front of an empty shop. Hideous open sores fester on his legs, his hair is grown long and wild, and he is covered in dirt. He stares at me with vacant eyes. It is a troubling sight. This will be me in two weeks, when the money runs out. I walk past the promise of dancing girls at La Tropicana and the Taxi Club, past the French bar at Le Barometre, before settling on a curry amok and a couple of pints at Retox. The evening is coming on and the bar girls are coming out.

After the hot tofu curry, i head back to the Corner Bar. Half a dozen young Khmer men are having a party in a tuk tuk across from the bar, drinking from a plastic bottle full of spirits. One of them jumps out and approaches me, flashing a palm-sized bag of gunja. You like? You buy? he asks. Awtay akwun, i say. No, don't like, don't buy. Smoking gunja at this point could only confuse things. I'm on a mission. I can't be stumbling about the streets of Victory Hill like some stoned fucking hippy.

Yama? he proposes. Now, this is an interesting development. My trusty travel guide describes yama, from the Sanskrit यम, meaning death, as a drug that "provokes powerful hallucinations, sleep deprivation and psychosis" and warns all travellers to steer well clear of it. I order two, and go into the bar to find Johnnno Downstairs. My man dashes off, promising to return with the goods in twenty minutes.

Yes, i remember the pinball machine, but i don't know where it is now, says Johnno. The owner is in gaol. You need to talk to his friend, Heinz. But i don't know where he is. You might try Rudi, he runs the German bar above the guesthouse down the road. He points.
The bar has a great view of the bay, terrible Eurotrash music, and no customers. No staff, either. Apart from the disco music, it is deserted. I go back downstairs and see a blond man in a black sleeveless Rammstein t-shirt taking directions from one of the restaurant staff. He sets out across the road. I follow him. This must be Rudi.

Rudi, i shout. He jumps.
Ja? Wie gehts?
Entschuldigung sie, bitte, i say, before realising that my high school German will not stretch far enough to ask for directions to a long-lost and possibly imaginary pinball machine. Perhaps i could deploy the only other German phrase i remember from those wasted high school years: Du bist so röt wie ein Krebs. Which means, of course, You are as red as a lobster.
It is doubtful the phrase would serve any useful purpose under the present circumstances. I switch to English.
I'm looking for Heinz, who may know the whereabouts of a pinball machine which used to be above the Corner Bar, i explain.
Of course, no problem, says Rudi, as if i'd asked for directions to the bus station. I know the bar. The owner is in gaol.
He thumbs through his mobile phone.
I will give you the number for Heinz, he says.

The number is engaged. I walk back to the Corner Bar, and my man pushes a plastic bag with two red pills into my hand. I slip him some money, and walk with him over to the tuk tuk party. One of the men offers me a cut-off water bottle, the bottom filled with what looks like fish sauce. One of the others hands me a skewer with some unidentified fried meat impaled on the end of it.
Awkun, i say, and dip the meat into the fish sauce. This provokes an outburst of hilarity.
What? i ask, glowering.
Is whiskey, one of them says, pointing at the strange brown liquid. Ah. Still, never apologise, never explain. I chew the meat, and down the rest of the weird-tasting drink. They offer me more. I carefully extract one of the yama tablets from my pocket and wash it down with some of this home-brewed liquor. It's time to see just how accurate the Lonely Planet travel guide really is.

By the time i am following Heinz on my rented Honda Dream through the ever diminishing backstreets of Victory Hill, i am beginning to feel a little strange. Perhaps it was that fried meat. The scooter, as promised on its shiny decal, does indeed handle like a Dream. That is, surreal images are looming before me and i have no idea where it is going to take me next. We are barrelling at high speed along a winding, narrow dirt footpath, where women sit chopping unidentifiable victuals and men are engaged in that most popular of pasttimes in South East Asia: squatting on their heels. We pass through some huge wrought-iron gates and ride up to a small house on a large block. A blue, dust covered VW convertible sits under the house.

I have no idea where i am, but i am suddenly feeling omnipotent and strangely light-headed. Heinz has started babbling about his friend. He is in gaol, you know.
You don't say.
It is all political. He was framed by his enemies. Ten years. Ten years in a Cambodian gaol - can you imagine? But it is going to the Supreme Court. I can't say any more.
I wasn't asking.
Heinz looks about furtively.
Other than this.
He walks up close to me, and holds my gaze.
This is a dangerous country, my friend. You can get your throat cut here for fifty dollars.
Wow. That's a bargain, i blurt out. I am beginning to feel a little dizzy. My mouth has gone dry and i feel like the red ants from the jungle have returned to crawl about the insides of my eyes. Heinz goes inside the house and returns carrying a large meat cleaver.
Now i show you, he says.
Right. I'm wishing i hadn't had those last two pints.
He walks over to where a bundled tarpaulin is held aloft by four rusted legs, its blue bulk taped roughly together with clear packing tape. He cuts quickly through the tape with the cleaver and pulls the decaying vinyl away.
It's a pinball machine.

All i can report, at this stage, is that it was a Whirlwind. All the rest is a blur.

IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE

Our English-speaking guide explains we will have to take the long way through the jungle, because the trail passes through a Buddhist hermitage set high on the hill.

"The monk there, he magic man. He meditate now, we cannot go through."

He points to the rough bamboo archway, decorated with colourful flags, which marks one trail leading up the hill to the left. One of the flags must be monk for Do Not Disturb. Reluctantly, we take the trail to the right. We see no more villagers dragging bundles of freshly cut bamboo, and the banana and papaya are replaced by dense, tall timber, vines and palms. We are above slash-and-burn country now, heading into the deep jungle. With a six-hour trek ahead of us, my shirt is already drenched with sweat after only an hour.

Up ahead, setting a cracking pace, is our Khmer guide, who speaks no English and smokes constantly. He wears long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt. Obviously it's a bit nippy for him this time of year. He's purloined my Wilderness Equipment backpack to store our vegetables, rice and extra water, and given me his smaller bag. Which, with its confusing pockets and worse than useless zips that continually burst open, is so annoying that i feel like flinging it into the trees. As i grope around fruitlessly for a water bottle in one of the hidden compartments, i trip over a vine.

As you may have guessed, i don't go trekking for the alleged fun of it. I'm chasing a story on the privatisation of Bokor National Park. Sokimex Petroleum, who are building a resort here, closed the only road in two months ago. The only way to get to the previously deserted French town of Bokor Hill Station, where the new development is taking place, is on foot through the jungle. The French colonialists built the outpost from 1917 to 1921 high on a mountain plateau, at an altitude of (my knees tremble at the thought) 1080 metres, as a way to escape the heat, the mosquitoes, and the lumpen proletariat. Many Khmer labourers died building the road up to the grand hotel, casino, post office, palace and night club.

Apart from the two guides, there are six others on this jaunt, who are apparently mad enough or bored enough to be taking this trek for pleasure. Apart from the two Ukrainians, who clearly just made a wrong turn somewhere on the way to their hotel.

Above the whoop-whoop of the gibbons, the birdcalls and the thrum of insects, we hear another sound. It is music, played on what sounds like a bamboo angklung. It's coming from the other side of the valley. We stop to listen. It's a magical sound.

"I thought you said he was meditating," i say to the guide. We press on. The two Ukranians are a decidedly odd couple. One of these Cossacks is wearing Thai fishing pants, high on his waist, with his t-shirt tucked into the waistband. His feet and ankles protrude from the bottom of his wide-bottomed trousers like stilts. The other one seems to have taken his style pointers from the Aki Kaurismäki film Leningrad Cowboys. The Ukrainians have made no attempt to communicate with the rest of the group and always stand slightly apart, whispering together like as though they were some kind of Communist fucking spies. The stilt-walker carries what appears to be a laptop satchel. The fat one in the cowboy outfit is constantly complaining to the skinny one. All the swear words are in Ukrainian, so i have no idea what he is saying, but i imagine it goes something like:

"This one more fine mess you gotten us into, Igor," Yuri says as he climbs another sandstone incline, struggling to remove a thorny vine from his cowboy hat. "How much further this gypsy fleabag hotel is? Where the godforsaken tour bus?"

Still, it can't be easy booking a tour when you speak no English and the tour operator speaks no Ukrainian. Even i understood the part where he said we must wear sturdy shoes. These two are struggling along in thongs. Yuri mutters to himself as he negotiates another fallen log.

We lunch at a waterfall. A myriad of butterflies flit and sit on the flat, grey sandstone rocks, their wings upright like a flotilla of yellow sailboats in the shallow pools of water. After a simple meal of rice and vegetables, Daniel from Oxford lights an enormous spliff, which he shares with me and a young Californian who goes by the unlikely name of Troyce. We swim, wash off the sweat in the waterfall, and laugh as the Ukrainians stand and mutter about the decadence of the West.

The climb gets dramatically steeper, and under the influence of the profoundly strong ganga, things get a little weird. Visions from countless Vietnam war movies i'm sure i never watched begin screening in my head. Fallen trees are marked here and there by machetes, and there seem to be tripwires and ambushes at every turn. I put my hand around what looks like a sturdy tree, only to have it crumble away, and suddenly my hand covered with a swarm of small, red, savagely biting ants. Large, mud-like bees nests appear in the trees. Our guide points as a short, black snake slithers from view. Paul, a Yorkshireman and amateur botanist, points out what looks like your garden-variety palm, the kind of thing you would have by the pool – except for those clumps of two-inch long needles sticking out of its stem. Occasionally we hear the jet-like whoosh of air from the large hornbills wheeling invisibly overhead.

Suddenly our Khmer guide stops. We are standing in a piece of jungle which looks a lot like all the other pieces of jungle we have pushed our way through. How can he tell where he is going, i wonder. It is when he begins backtracking that i decide he probably can't. It was disconcerting enough earlier in the day, when two members of our party, along with our translator, caught up with the rest of us at a rest stop, looking even more sweaty and shaken than usual. "Are we glad to see you," said the Englishwoman. "I thought we were lost." The English speaking 'guide' nodded his head. "I was sure we were lost," he said. "I was calling out, but i couldn't hear you." How very reassuring.

The Khmer guide stands motionless, looking up another trail. Then he nods his head and barks something to our translator, beckoning us over. "Is OK," says the translator. "He know a shortcut."

Oh, sure.

"Is two hours from here instead of four. But is steeper." Steeper? How the fuck can it get any steeper? We soon find out. Yuri mutters to himself as he scales a vertical pile of rocks ahead of me. I pray he doesn't slip in those damn flip-flops because he will take me out with him on the way down. Higher up i see our erstwhile guide, walking casually up the scree, using his hands not – like the rest of us – to find purchase in a handhold, but to light another cigarette, which he puffs on gaily as he disappears from view on his sweat-free ascent. Hours later, as we emerge drenched and exhausted to sprawl our weary bodies about on a mountaintop trail, he stands waiting like a polite elevator attendant. I take off my shirt and wring out the sweat

We trek across an open plateau to reach Popokvil Falls, "the waterfall of the swirling clouds", where a truck from the ranger's station is supposed to pick us up and drive us the remaining eight kilometres to Bokor. Of course, it doesn't turn up, because Sokimex Petroleum have long since banished the rangers from their base in the old hospital at Bokor Hill Station. Or, as it is now officially referred to on the Cambodian Ministry for Tourism website, "Bokor Resort". Which sounds much like Sokha Resort, where the owner of Sokimex Petroleum, Kem Sokha, privatised the best beach in Cambodia. Another curious fact i noticed on the Ministry's website was that there is no listing for Bokor National Park under the 'National Parks' link. If you click on it you get a page which reads "under construction". Later, when i photograph the cement factory built within the national park to supply concrete for the new development i realise just how accurate this is.

Not surprisingly, no truck arrives from the non-existent ranger's station. But we do get one man on a battered scooter. He begins to ferry us, one by one, up the horrendously pot-holed and boulder-strewn "road" to our accommodation. I do some calculations and figure that even going as fast as he can, on that road, it will take about six hours to get us all to the station. We can walk it in about two.

We start walking. The man on the scooter returns, this time accompanied by another man in camouflage gear on a red scooter. He wears an RCAF badge. Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. He is army. So i am not surprised when i later learn Sokimex Petroleum have the Cambodian military working as private security on this project. And that, under their company policy, we are not supposed to be here at all. The army officer looks us over carefully before continuing on his way.

The accommodation is basic. Three double bunks in a room. Given there are seven of us, plus the guides, it is fortuitous that two of our party are a couple, or two of us very soon would have been a couple.

After exploring the hill station we lie, exhausted, in our bunks. Apart from Paul, who sets off on a quick jog around the lake. That way madness lies. Yuri, having successfully negotiated a six-hour jungle trek through some difficult terrain wearing thongs, falls and hurts himself climbing out of his top bunk. I learn some more Ukrainian.

At dinner, Yuri is unimpressed by the simple fare. Rice, steamed vegetables, and a bit of beef. The rice and vegetables are delicious. I don't know about the meat, because Yuri serves himself first, carefully spearing all the beef from the large bowl with his fork, and piling it up on his plate. He spends his dinnertime complaining to Igor through mouthfuls of beef.

"This hotel very bad, Igor," i imagine him muttering. "My backside very sore from scooter. Why we come here, Igor? Falling down buildings here everywhere. Everywhere, these falling down buildings. Why we come here? We have same falling down buildings at home, in Ukraine."

We don't know when we are due to leave in the morning. It depends when the bribed driver of the steel-tray truck can make himself available to torture and pummel us on a bone-shattering judder down the pile of rocks that passes as a road to the mountain trail. We sit on the steps of the ex-ranger's station, looking out across the excavated lake to the abandoned hotel, casino, church, and the rest. Crumbling into the thick foliage of palms, vines and wild, thorny raspberries. The water tower, like a spacecraft that dropped this strange, vanished civilisation onto this remote mountain plateau. The original casino, perched high on a sheer cliff which drops off into a mist-shrouded jungle, was moved to a building closer to the lake. Too many people were losing all their money at the tables, buying one last drink, and taking a lonely walk outside into oblivion.

We sit and look at this abandoned playground of the rich and suicidal. We discuss the proposed resort, which would redevelop these buildings and build a huge, 5-star Vegas-style hotel and casino in a large tract of cleared land between the church and the monastery perched on the cliff in the distance. Our translator goes inside and returns with a glossy Sokimex Petroleum calendar, filled with artists' impressions of the impending resort. The colourful, airbrushed view across the lake shows bright, renewed, Lego-like buildings, a promenade peopled by happy and rich strolling couples, a Vegas-style casino, a fake Disneyesque waterfall and - believe it or not - an artificial volcano, complete with exploding red lava.

Yuri looks, incredulous, from the lurid calendar to the desolate scene before him. He looks from one to the other and back again, again and again, before shouting something at his comrade in Ukranian. I'm not sure, but i think it went something like:

"You see, Igor? They think we fools! This place nothing like brochure."