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Cambodia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s just a shame the people who live there insist on killing each other. Where the wide and silent Tonle Sap River meets the mighty Mekong we find that haunting and exotic shit-hole called Phnom Penh. It’s Cambodia’s Capital, but Cambodia hasn’t got any ‘capital’. The gross domestic product of the country every year is zero, so there are few sidewalks in Phnom Penh and there’s no drainage. When it rains the city is instantly flooded.

Public Transport is almost non existent. There are small, light buses, which are always crowded to overflowing [like one of those attempts on the Guinness Book of World Records], but that’s about it. After that, one has to rely on private enterprise: taxis and rickshaws pulled by bicycles and moped taxis. There is a railway station in Phnom Penh and there’s a man in an office who looks after the railway station. It’s a lovely art deco piece of architecture from French colonial days and the man in the office keeps it well swept with his special, government regulation broom. The problem is, the railway lines don’t go anywhere. The line is overgrown and the few trains that were shunted into sidings have rusted. Nobody ever visits the railway station because there’s no rail service, which makes life easier for the man in the office. There’s never anything to sweep up.

The airport at Phnom Penh doesn’t really have a Customs. There are administrators in white shirts, but it’s perfectly obvious that they are not in charge. Instead, there is a large presence from the Royal Cambodian Army. Actually it’s more of an airstrip than an airport, but it does have a terminal building into which you are herded at gunpoint. It’s at this delicate juncture in proceedings that you find out that you need a visa to enter the country.

You don’t have a visa? Walk this way.

The uniformed officials behind the counter scowl at your passport. They throw it around between each other as if to show their complete and utter contempt for somebody without a visa. They hand you a series of forms to fill in and then they scowl at you again. Since nobody on the plane has a visa, what you have is fifty people in a small room being scowled at by a bunch of uniformed Cambodians with Kalishnikovs. If the plane from Bangkok is full, there’s nowhere near enough space and you spend your time bumping into people whilst trying to rest your visa forms on your hand-luggage.

“Excuse me. Oh, I’m sorry, is that your automatic weapon.”

It’s complete chaos. If you’ve never done this before and you weren’t expecting it, the chaos can be intimidating. You don’t realize that the Royal Cambodian Army is under strict instructions never to open fire on passengers arriving at the airport. It’s very unusual for Cambodian soldiers to ignore their instructions, unless somebody upsets them, they get confused, or they’re in a bad mood that day.

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