So I'd been in Phnom Penh for nearly a month, it's nearly a month since I last saw Thi - where has all the time gone? Lazy days to be sure, usually at the Riverside or the FCC for lunch, catching up with old friends and making new ones variously. I'd left the DV8 guesthouse, the man that ran it was an idiot. Even though I was his only guest and had been there a month he'd neglected to tell me that he'd decided to gut the room below starting at sunrise. So I got out of there, practically throwing the money I owed at him in his face, he was fat, lazy, incompetent and incapable - and I let him know. This was now Saturday, but the story of the visa woes goes back to the preceeding Thursday.

I realised that my Cambodian tourist visa was about to expire in a few days, and so I took my passport, a photograph and $35 to a tourist operator. Replacing the tourist visa was a cinch, usually done by the next day whereas in Vietnam for example, it can take up to a week before that precious booklet is returned. The lady at the desk informed me that the visa was fine - I had another two months left on it. I couldn't have been one hundred percent awake, I agreed with her when she showed me the dates and went back to the Riverhouse for lunch. It was only later that the nagging thought returnded - was she right? There's a tendency among SE Asians generally not to be able to admit that they do not know something and by painful experiences you learn to double check everything. So I fished out my visa and peered at it again - the stupid girl (who's job was handling visas) had misread the damned stamp - in Cambodia at certain borders you have to apply for the right to enter, between dates spanning three months, before actually getting to the border. I'd sorted this out in Saigon, so everything was above board - except that I'd entered exactly 30 days earlier and the visa itself lasted one month after the initial date of entry. Oh don't worry about it overly, a technicality that not even Cambodian visa expert appears to be cognisent of! So I trudged to a different office and asked to apply for an extension. She could not do - when I asked why, she replied that the next day was the Kings birthday and that it was a public holiday. Today was too late (by now it had gone 5.00pm), tomorrow a holiday, then the weekend, and another bloody holiday on Monday. I might as well keep the passport until Tuesday and sort it out then. But that meant...I pointed out that by the time I could physically renenw the passport I would have overstayed my visa by 5 days - tough, she shrugged with her eyes, something that all SE Asian women develop seemingly from birth and can actually mean absolutely anything. This meant tough, that's a $5 a day fine for each day over - another $25 dollars wasted.

Pissed of but philisophical I returned to the restaurant and bumped into a friend, Colin, a wry, well travelled Englishman with whom I'd struck up an unlikely friendship. I mentione that the next day, unebeknown to me, was a bank holiday.

'Oh yes, didn't you know?' he inquired merrily, when it was bloody obvious I had not. 'Actually, don't worry old chap,' (yes he did speak like that), 'caught a lot of people out, even the ones that live here. You see, it's not the old King's birthday, that's the one you've probably got pencilled in in your diary or super computer or whatever. This is the new King's birhday, the old one retired last year - this holday won't be in the guidebooks for a good few years yet'.

Brilliant. But I was somewhat mollified to discover that I wasn't totally to blame, besides I had $400 dollars to last me until Wednesday - not a problem.

On Sunday, checking my money before I left the new hotel I began to get uneasy. I'd paid $200 dollars in rent that I'd owed to the owner of DV8 (may his soul fester in the nine levels of hell!) so that left me with $150. I'd got pretty wasted the night before but $50? Ah yes, I'd met up with the Scotsman and ended up all over the place, $50 with Gordon was easily explained, along with the numbing hangover. It was now Sunday, I had $150 to get me to Wednesday - no problem.

But it's at times like this that things begin to go against you; so far it was just a small matter of bad luck, under-zealousness on my part to be sure of every fucking bloody buggery holiday there is in Cambodia (it's at least eight a week it seems at times), and the DV8 guesthouse owner's (may his purulent flesh be covered in lice, leeches, fleas and mosquitos) decision to create a war-zone beneath my room.

Now here's the clever bit. As well as having the $150 in cash, I also had a visa card on which banks will give you cash as long as you have valid ID, such as a valid passport, and travellers cheques which, with valid ID, say, oh I don't know, a valid passport you can also get cash. Any bells ringing? Oh and there aren't any ATMs. Well if you didn't spot it, I already had. My passport was not valid, not until Wednesday, so I couldn't get any cash out until Wednesday. I'd even gone to the aforesightedness of having my passport photocopied, but the banks wouldn't accept that because in the photograph I look like I'm black from the copy whereas I am in fact alarmingly white. They'd accept a drivers licence if I had one? - No, that got washed away ironically with my passport in the atrocious floods in New Zealand just over a year ago. A further irony did not escape my observation, that my driving licence contains only my signature and does not carry a picture of my weathered, world-weary countenance.

Oh well, these things are sent to try us. On Tuesday I was down to about $120 dollars, and went to get my visa renewed, That'll be $75 cash. $45 for the visa, and $30 dollars for the overstay. Hang on, but that should be only 5 days - $25 dollars for the overstay. But no, the actual visa wouldn't be stamped until tomorrow morning, by which time of course, it was another calendar day. Okay, $75 dollar, but at leas the next day at 1.00pm I'd have the passport back - right? She shrugged her eyebrows knowingly,

'Does that mean yes?' I asked. She nodded. 'For sure, sure?'

'For sure!' she replied.

'Thankyou!' I left the shop, my so called ordeal over and besides I had a robust $45 dollars left in my paws. Time for a celebratory lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading, mulling over my moods, occasionally talking, writing and generally feeling at ease, though by now I was ready to leave, I'd outstayed my welcome in Phnom Penh, the city seemed to be telling me something, I was no longer as at ease as I once was, time to move on.

The next day I walked the usual walk under the noon-day sun, blasting down in the pitiless furnace of the sky - it was the rainy season, a strange mixture of intense heat, then humidity then scoring rains. Past the stonecutters chipping away at their Angkor replicas for temples and tourists, the woodcarvers chipping away at friezes and signs, past the artist shops selling guady, garish primary coloured claptrap - I just couldn't fall in love with their art, most of it inducing the feeling of wanting to vomit most severely. Ignoring the endless moto and tuk-tuk drivers as they exhorted me with their pitiful, whining, wheedling patois. I played a game of totally ignoring them, which really get's them angry. Wrong I suppose but fuck them, they don't hassle local people the way they plague foreigners. I became quite Zen at it, which appeared to infuriate them even more. When one of them had the audacity to physically block my path, I would simply walk over the motorbike leaving the off-balanced wankers fuming and shouting but what the hell, I'd had more than my fill of those ignorant, sour-sweat smelling louts.

Into the cool air conditioned tourist office I marched up to claim my passport. It wasn't there. Why not? She rang the office and had one of those machine-gun like rapid fire conversations for about ten minutes, while idly playing some tetris-like computer game. Eventually she'd finished, and explained that the man with the stamp wasn't in today and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. Calming myself down, I asked her to clarify the position, Tomorrow, she assured me, tomorrow okay, for sure....

I was now down to about $20 dollars, thinking, okay, still no big deal, tomorrow....better tighten the belt. There were only two places I knew that would actually take Visa cards, oddly enough the Riverhouse and the FCC. My doom then, would be to spend at least $15 minimum at a sitting, and pay a whopping four percent surcharge. Grumbling to myself, but fairly au-fait with false manianas I began to realise that I might wait for some time. Eventually, my friend Robin arrived,

'Oh yes,' he said airily, 'didn't I tell you? The Governor's gone on holiday for a fortnight, he's the only one that can stamp visas in Cambodia you know, won't be back until Saturday, then there's another bank holiday on Monday, so you won't see your Visa until Wednesday old chap.' he smiled helpfully. 'Can I get you another glass of wine?'

The next few days were the same, Robin was right, I'd go to the office and they'd say, mebbe tomorrow. It was pointless, so I stopped, I knew more than them about the fucking governors and his stamp's holiday than the tourist office did. Everything I tried was to no avail. I asked for it back thinking, I might as well hop back to Saigon, say hello to This and come back a few days later with visa intact. But know, only the governor can return the visa and he's.....

I was boling pot angry and shouted a lot at the poor girl, this never gets you far in Cambodia but fuck me sideways it made me feel a lot better.

So I endured day after weary day of going to the same two restaurants twice a day and spending far more than I normally would. The $20 float I had quickly dwindled, even though I could go hardly anywhere. A coke here, the internet there, a moto here, some orange juice there....by the time Wednesday tumbled around I had $1.50 to my name. At the same time that this occurred all my usual suspects had all disappeared so I couldn't even cadge a few measly dollars of anyone. As I said, sometimes life just kicks you in the balls, but this, I comforted myself, was nowhere near as bad as some of the positions that others had found themselves in. What made it worse was the helplessness of it all, the frustration of being blocked at every turn, having taken all reasonable actions to prevent such a happenstance.

By the time my passport was returned, stamped and I could once more get cash, thirteen days had elapsed. Normally, it took only twenty four hours. I got some cash out, went to a bar that didn't take Visa, and eat and drunk myself into a stupor. When I checked the money the next day, I was $100 dollars short. I realised then, that in my drunken state, I had given the moto-driver not the agreed $1 dollar fare, but a $100 dollar note by mistake. I could hear the Gods of the moto-drivers that I had ignored and walked over in a crescendo of roaring in divine retribution.

yechydda,