The time had finally come, it was time to go back, to where I was not sure, but the money wouldn't last forever and besides I was truly squandering it now, I'd become lazy, unadventerous and profligate. I wasn't working, I had gone back to my leeching, sucking days, I was absorbing and not contributing in any meaningfuly way. Yet I was still loathe to leave Phnom Penh, despite the unasked for adventures that had so unpleasantly foisted themselves upon me over the last couple of months. I'd unwittingly developed a routine of unspeakable laziness and expensive debauchery, none of which was even remotely satisfying or edifying. In drunken stupors women would come and go from my bed, I would play the same games daily with my fan club girls from the Riverside and every day I would watch with dull amusement as they fed Sambo the elephant and posed for the handful of amazed tourists as she took their bread and bananas with suprising grace and delicacy, while the street children looked on enviously and hungrily. Would that they had been born a elephant! Andy, the fat Swiss owner of the Riverside, would bellow daily at the frightened girls and daily I would get closer to wanting to punch him for his all too frequent, drunken bullying of my friends that had come to care for me so wonderfully and whom I had come to care for. I realised that this was in fact the last anchor that bound me to Phnom Penh, the girls had become funny, familiar and family in a strange sense.

I'd become rabbitly, pointlessly, paralysed, and whereas in Saigon I had the excuse of a woman to hang on and hold to, to cherish and care for, here such a prospect had not materialised. I booked myself a bus ticket to Bangkok, a journey of some 8 hours, I was assured, and on the last night got royally drunk with Gordon and Major Lim of the tourist police. Lim was sad to hear that I was leaving, Gordon couldn't believe me, I had after all threatened such an event so many times that my nose had developed a tendency to expand like an excited penis whenever I said it. Deep into our cups that night in the same bar that we'd all been shot at a few weeks earlier, Lim toasted me, and then winked.

'Phnom Penh', he said conspiratorially, 'Just like Hotel California!'

Lim often came up with gnomic expressions like this, I usually just nodded and grinned. He grinned back expectantly this time, nodding encouragingly to me.

'You understand?'

'Er, may'be?' I hazarded. Lim was always trying to crack jokes and sadly the culture divide meant that they usually disappeared deep into the well, um cracks between the two.

'You see,' he explained proudly, his smile Cheshire, his chest expanding, 'Phnm penh - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!'

I had to admit, I smiled, this was good for Lim. He beamed at me as I laughed and knew that whereas before I was an aquaintence I was now a friend for life or a bribe, whichever came soonest. Gordon, the shady Scot, now hopelessly pissed and grabbing the totally wrong end of the stick chimed in,

'You can take our lives, but you can never take OUR FREEDOM!'

He was always prone to quoting from Braveheart after downing a bottle or two of Pipers.

The rest of the night blurred past, and remarkably I actually woke up the next morning tired, cranky and hungover but ready for the 6.00am start to Bangkok.

The shuttle bus didn't see fit to turn up until 7.30am but I wasn't particuarly bothered. I spent my time kicking over the one or two motos of the drivers opposite the hotel. I would pretend to leave, they would gun their motos and block my way and then I would kick their motos over and tell them to fuck off. When that bored me I crossed the road to the caged mynah bird outsdide a noodle house that had woken me up at dawn for the last two weeks and screeched at it until it had the grace to shut up an look as remorseful as a mynah bird can be. I suspect he was intelligent enough to realise that playing dead was probably the better option when confronted with a hungover Welshman that had just kicked two moto drivers off their bikes. But I was'nt totall convinced, he looked a little crafty and smug to me, as though he knew something I did not. I gave up, and wandered over to the school next door, where dozens of beautiful Khmer children all dressed in navy and white were arriving for the days lessons. To my amazement the teachers were all there, helping them out of their parents cars, or off their motos (yes yes, it was a private school for rich kids) and greeting each child by name as they came into the school courtyard. My draw dropped. They were obviously a little nervous of me given my overtly visible display of erratic displeasure at being up at such an ungodly hour, but soon ignored me when they realised I wasn't about to kick any of the children over or squawk at them threateningly. I couldn't believe it. The school I went to from about 13 onwards was the sort of institution where the children threw stones at teachers whenever they could and teachers put their cigarettes out on the youngsters whenever they thought they could get away with it. This was completely different. Both parties seemed to actually respect one another and both students and teachers were clean, keen and sober. This troubled me as I wandered back to my hotel a few yards away. One of the moto drivers I'd already kicked over a few minutes before wheedled half-heartedly 'where you go' even though it was fucking bloody obvious and in return I gave a half hearted side-kick as I passed that failed to push him over. It felt like missing an obvious pot at pool.

'It's a secret' I snarled.

'What you look for?' asked his companion, automatically who'd quite intelligently put a little distance between his moto and my boot.

'The meaning of fucking life' I growled, unhappy that he'd deprived me of an easy target.

'One dollar!' he offered.

I grinned, scowlingly. He'd either had the last laugh or knew something that no other human did. Either way, my last tryst with a Cambodian moto driver ended in their victory for all my sullen rudeness and random acts of violence that they had chosen never to respond to.

As I plunged into the rivers of streaming traffic at the crossroad I saw the hurtling magic bus that would take me to Thailand scattering children on bikes, motos and tuk-tuks alike in it's bullying fury. My bags were thrown on, I was unceremoniously hauled aboard by yabbering, urgent handlers, pushed into a half-seat and then we were off. As though in defiance, the mynah bird seemed to suddenly get mouthy, or should that be beaky, and screeched, rattling its cage in furious delight at my departure.

'Squack squack squack squack squack!'

The little bastard seemed to be grinning manically, knowingly at me, as it lost a few feathers hurtling around in its tiny cage. It knew something I did not; later I was to find out what.

yechydda,