Two weeks earlier my Vietnamese girlfriend Thi and I had arrived tired, hungry and exhausted at an old haunt of mine in Phnom Penh, the Riverside restaurant. Run by an avuncular German, Andy, the food was Western, reasonably priced, had decent wine and daily English papers - something that a traveller seizes on like gold dust. As well as these obvious charms, it was next to a filthy, busy, thriving market and provided a kind eye over the Tonle Sap river.

We'd come from Saigon a trip that had taken nearly ten hours largely because of the delay at the border between Vietnam and Cambodia where for some mystical reason there are about 2 customs guards on each side processing about 200 people. The weather is always hot and unforgiving at these places. Food is at besy described as dodgy, and not even This would touch it. Its not that we're particularly precious, I've eaten in some pretty dodgy places myself, but even though we were hungry we lacked any appetite. When we hit the Riverside, we ordered food straight away.

I couldn't be bothered to search for a place to stay, when right opposite was a 'red light' guest house called, DV8. Get it? Well we only needed the room for the night, perhaps two or three, Thi had to return to Saigon in just a few days. We slept in a windlowless room with just a fan for company. I hate sleeping in rooms without windows, it means you don't get that gentle pull of the day from the lighting morning, you just turn over, wonder briefly what time it is and sleep restlessly for far longer than you normally would. And when you evenetually awake, you spend the rest of the day feeling completely knackered. For some strange reason.

Thi had gone a few weeks earlier, and to my own surprise I was still in the same guest house - the inertia had set back in, it was always tomorrow, maniana. It's like that classic talk show were the presenter is chatting to a Spaniard and an Irish man. The Spaniard says, oh, in Spain we like to say maniana, may'be today may'be tomorrow, may'be the next week or even the one after that. Laughing the presenter turns to the Irishman and asks him what the Irish equivalent of maniana would be.

'Oh, we don't have a word that expresses that sort of urgency'

One day I took out some cash on my visa card, a long holiday was coming up and I wanted to be able to cover myself comfortably, $500 was more than enough. There aren't any ATMs in Cambodia, and the banks are a paper jungle pain, so the usual tactic was to keep the number of visists down and take out large sums. This would then be deposited in the guest house safe, I rarely carry more than about $50 dollars on me. It was one of those classic conjunctions of fate. The guest house owner wasn't around, he was the only one with the safe key, and I didn't want to be carrying that much cash with me. For a few hours, I thought, it would be safe enough in my room. So I tucked away four $100 dollar bills in a book in a pile of books, safe enough for 4-5 hours.

When I returned later the money, of course, had disappeared. The cleaner had hoovered it up and taken off - she'd simply left.

By law, all Cambodian people have to have an ID card in order to work, this includes their addresses. We went to her home, and to little surprise the entire house had been cleared out. Her neighbours said they left quickly and wouldn't tell anyone where they were heading.

I hadn't expected much else, I knew the money was gone.

Later I talked to a friend, Major Lim from the tourist police. He shrugged and said,

'She'll be caught. Their pretty stupid most of the time. They'll spend the money on their family quickly enough, and Cambodian families can be vast indeed, there's an expectation that good fortune should be shared as widely as possible.'

Long lost aunts, uncles and cousins would come crawling out of the woodwork as soon as the grapevine had done its efficient job and disappear as soon as the money went. Then they would be left with nothing, and the family that she'd stayed with would want her and her own out of their home. She'd return to her own home a few months later thinking that she'd got away with it, but as soon as she tried to find work or move she'd be apprehended and thrown into prison, probably for the rest of her life. Her only other option was to spend the rest of her life sleeping on the streets.

I thought about this later. Her life was probably ruined, $400 dollars wasn't worth that. But most people in Cambodia survive on less than a dollar a day, $60 dollars a month, the temptation to her must have been too much to bear. Instead of feeling angry at the loss, and her theft, curiously enough I felt guilty that I had put so much temptation in her way. Sure she, had to be looking for the money, she's guilty as charged, but for my own part I felt complicit in the crime.

$400 dollars wasn't going to break my bank, but it might have broken the poor woman's life.

yechydda,