Cambodian Damage Control
9 December 2005
I’ve always taken pride in my consciously cultivated antennae for danger and fierce paranoia about valuables while on the road. Cambodia was a really unfortunate place to get complacent.
It was my third day exploring the temples. For the first time in months I’d not worn jeans, so my passport and wallet were not, as usual, snug against my bum and thigh. They were in my day bag, which was in Rhubarb’s basket. I’d also taken out one of my reserve cash stores and my plane ticket to Australia. They were in the day bag too.
The lock I’d been using to secure the bag had, just an hour before, broken. By that evening I was feeling so la-di-da I’d even stopped taking the elementary precaution of looping the bag’s strap around Rhubarb’s handle bars to guard against exactly what was to happen.
Amateur.
I was cycling back into Siem Reap after sunset, marvelling at the ancient groovy things looming out of the twilight and singing ‘Sally MacLennane’, my favourite Pogues number. Happy as Larry. High on life. That was when they got me.
Two guys on a motorcycle crashed into me from the left, knocked me to the ground, grabbed the bag and accelerated into the swarms of identical scooters inhabiting these roads. In addition to my passport and wallet, the bag contained my glasses, sunglasses, camera and – most heart-wrenching of all – the big black book in which I write these diary entries and so much more. Following the most creatively productive period of my life it was full of notes, quotes, essays, tables and poetry: the irreplaceable artefact of the last seven months.
A simple moment and everything changes. It took a few seconds for the enormity to sink in. I was in big trouble. My stomach clenched up.
At the tourist police station it took five minutes to find anyone. They were zero help. At the main station I sat, drenched in sweat and trying not to throw up, as the fat man behind the desk took an hour to fill out two A4 forms while watching a soap opera over my shoulder.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the conventional course would be to go to Phnom Penh (I have no money, remember), spend ten days titting about with bureaucrats and miss my onward flight to Australia. That wasn’t a course I was prepared to countenance, so I hatched a plan.
Because I used to live in Thailand, I know it quite well. Once there, I’m safe. I therefore resolved to break myself over the border illegally, get to a cash machine (I have a secret spare cash card) and then throw money at the problem. Once in Bangkok I would cast myself upon the mercy of the British Embassy. What were they going to do? Refuse me a new passport?
I didn’t sleep well last night. By 8.15 a.m. this morning I was in contact with the Thai underworld. By 9 a.m. I’d initiated negotiations with the cops. It wasn’t going to be cheap.
Said cops insisted on completing a ‘situation’ report (let’s just say they hadn’t helicoptered in a forensics team), which meant going to the scene of the crime and drawing diagrams. As far as I was concerned it was a way of wasting time before we got down to the time-honoured custom of bribery. We were faffing around on the tarmac when one of the police took a call on his radio. He turned to me and asked “Are you Peter Thomas Bakermarsh?”
A moment of clarity. I hadn’t given them my middle name.
Days since leaving London: 197
