On Wednesday the bar belonging to my guest house hosted a NLHE poker tournament with $5 buy-in. Of course I had to join in and so did nine others, making a total of ten players. Those without a clue were gone soon and in the end I was fighting with a French railway engineer and a US online pokerplayer for the first price. Our weapons were monopoly and scrabble pieces as they didn’t have proper poker chips in the bar.

Kampot is a bit of a strange place. My room costs me $5 a night but meals at the restaurant go for $3-$5. If you’re used to food being about $1 that’s quite a lot. There is not many street food places around here and those that are there don’t look like I want to eat there. Locals are surprisingly disinterested in me. Usually any sign of white skin makes a centre of attention but not here.

Phnom Penh is an interesting city but not really to my taste. It is much dirtier than Bangkok and at the moment parts of the city are under water. That makes strolling around a bit disgusting at times. Watching Phnom Penh makes it obvious that Cambodia is way less developed than Thailand. The guy who hosted me has a really large place (seven bedrooms) and there was always a couple of couchsurfers at his place.