It was yet another afternoon whiling away the time at the Riverside restaurant, waiting it seemed like forever to get my visa approved. The day was hot and muggy, hotter than I remembered it before, several months ago when I was last here. The rains had started at last, and every afternoon it would bucket down in torrents, scattering the people who'd run for shelter agains the huge pound drops as they crashed to earth and exploded. It was good that the rains had come at last, across the Tonle Sap you could see where the river normally rose to and it was easily thirty or forty feet below its wide, highest level. Drought seemed to be the watchword across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia as I had travelled through those lands, in fact I suddenly realised that I hadn't seen any rain in nine months, long ago it seemed now back in Lake Toba, Indonesia.

It was while I was wheeling these musings above the newspaper, effortlessly ignoring the boot boys,

'Sir shoe shine sir!'

Or the booksellers,

'Sir buy book!'

That I noticed one of the boot boys resting, leaning up agains a tuk-tuk, just a few feet away. A man had approached him and was saying something, I know not what. I don't know why but I just had this feeling of revulsion for the man, he was slight and effeminate yet seemed monstrous and loathsome. Sometimes you get gut feelings, and you don't quite know why.

The boy nodded at whatever was said and turned to follow the man. He was dressed in fake diesel shorts and a T-shirt, with closely cropped hair, and a pair of plastic flip flops. That was when even more alarm bells started ringing, I wondered naively why he needed to take the boot boy away from his pitch to get his flip-flops cleaned? Curious, I turned and watch them walk a short way, and then get into taxi and drive off. Why would he need to take the boot boy into a taxi?

The thoughts mulled through my mind and then the realisation dawned. The boot boy couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, Phnom Penh and Cambodia is notorious for child-sex, and Western men come to prey. This is where predators like the former British pop star Gary Glitter used to hunt out children for sex.

A friend of mine sat down to escape the heat under a whickering fan, the day was getting even muggier. I recounted what I had seen a few minutes earlier,

'You're probably right, some of the boot boys turn tricks and so do the book selling girls.' he said. 'They make more money doing that than they ever will selling books - most of that money goes to their handlers, they sleep at night on the streets or in the orphanage if there's room.'

I remember the rose sellers of Chiang Mai in Thailand, how that too was often a front for child sex. I'm not stupid I know it goes on, worse, the customers, contrary to popular belief are mostly local men. The reason Western men come to prey is because the child-sex trade is already well established. Every day in the Cambodia daily are stories of men raping underage children, and sadly it's quite often their own children.

I felt sick, and noticed that some thirty minutes later the boot boy was back at his pitch looking it appeared none the worse for wear. Perhaps I was wrong, but something in my heart told me I was right. If I saw that happening again I vowed to intervene, and cursed myself for not being more astute.

Suddenly a spike of fire ripped down from the darkening heavens, and on cue, a river poured down in cascading sheets bouncing off the pavements and roads. As we retreated indoors to escape the rain, I noticed the boot boy scuttling away with his polishes and brushes, and wondered briefly if he thought that anything much at all had taken place that day that was unusal. Perhaps he even thought it was a good day, he'd made some money.

yechydda,