We get up before five o’clock. We spend a whole day being chauffeured from temple to temple in Ankor Wat by tuk-tuk. The ticket office is the first attraction. 5.30am, crowds of people. for Cambodian standards, an entrance fee of $20 is outright madness. Of this, 10% goes to monument conservation, the rest goes to a petro-giant and the Ministry of Finance. At least $200,000 a day is apparently not enough. Restorations are paid for by Japan and France.

Ankor Wat, World Heritage Site. You have to go. I’m there now. The sunrise is beautiful. And the rest is just as I imagined it would be. Nothing new, nothing to discover. Even though Tomb Raider was filmed here. After 12 temples, we drive home again. Our brains are muddy, our feet flat. (more…)

I ride my motorbike for another day. During the colonial era, the French created a summer resort in the coastal mountains nearby, similar to Bach Ma in Vietnam. The off-road track into the mountains to Bokor is said to be one of the most beautiful roads in Cambodia. I drive over 100 kilometres to get there. There is a sign next to the barrier: road closed to motorbikes. Not for cars. The guards are incorruptible.

On the way back, I get caught in a tropical downpour. No jacket can keep it out. I take another look at the weird nightlife and how all humanity dissolves inconspicuously. One guy gives his friend money so that his “hooker” doesn’t steal it after giving him a blow job. I go to bed and politely fend off the knocker shortly afterwards. (more…)

I take the bus for a few hours to the coast. A small town called Nowhere. By motorbike to empty sandy beaches in the off-season. The first signs of Kamibiza appear in the form of large concrete castles. Old majestic wrought-iron fences from the colonial era are everywhere. They surround empty fields. Other walls stand in the air on 2 metre high stilts. Escher would certainly have liked that.

Posters against child prostitution hang everywhere. There are some helpers on the bus wearing T-shirts from a home for street children in Nowhere. I am worried. It is reassuring that child prostitution is being publicised. What is worrying is that it seems to be necessary. (more…)

Phnom Penh is a city in black and white. Some shades of grey seem like colours at first. In the evening, however, I am sure that there aren’t even any shades of grey. Why? I have seen poverty. It’s worse here. Slums are guarded by rubbish belts. The millionaires’ mansions a block away are guarded by barbed wire and CTV. I’ve seen despair. Here it has only one eye. I’ve heard of genocide. Here the murderers ended up killing each other. I have heard of forgiveness. Here there is only forgetting.

Phnom Penh is black and white. Old Khmer Rouge sit in parliament. The elite help themselves to everything the people lack. The people lack everything and they shout at me all day long: give me your money! (more…)

Get up at six, leave at seven. Three hours by bus to the Mekong. Walking, boating, walking, eating, walking, boating, walking, bus, walking, ferry, walking, three hours by bus. I fall asleep again and again. The hours pass me by like a zombie on tranquillisers. The sun is shining and water lilies float in the brown waters of the Mekong.

The tour group is quite nice, a colourful mix, young and old and from all over. Not terror tourists, but people with interesting stories and questions. But I’m too tired. Switch on the MP3 player and go back to sleep. Some work in the evening, but I can’t concentrate. More than 6 hours’ sleep for the first time in three days. (more…)