There you can meet other travellers and expats who drop in for a browse a drink and Bert’s wife’s famous chops and chips

There you can meet other travellers and expats who drop in for a browse, a drink and Bert’s wife’s famous chops and chips. Or if you just want a quiet read, you can sit in comfortable basket chairs amid trailing plants on the second- storey balcony overlooking the sampans on the Mekong.Bert Hoak is a garrulous and warm-hearted bibliophile, an Alaskan American of German and Irish extraction who first visited Cambodia five years ago to work for an NGO. Among the heavily made-up, but beautiful filles de joie was an unkempt young client casually sporting a Russian machine gun. I decided to get my bearings by walking past the silver pagoda and beside the Mekong to Bert’s Bookshop and Guest House. I thought I might stay there instead.Bert’s is a hive of useful gossip about Cambodia. After a little bargaining I agreed to pay$10 for a bare room with a TV with five channels, including one French and one Indian.I soon discovered I was directly above a dance hall and that the hotel was a bordello.

The city with its boulevards still retains the air of faded French colonial elegance, set off by colourful Buddhist temples and shrines.On the recommendation of an American fellow passenger I booked into a hotel with air conditioning. After Saigon I was struck by the contrasting extremes of poverty and wealth. There are more Mercedes and smart new buildings, the result of United Nations and Non-Governmental Organisation investment, but there is also more garbage and more homeless and limbless camping out. About 100 western travellers on tight budgets do so daily and on this particular road no dangerous incidents have been reported.My first impression, after the energy and purpose of Vietnam, was of the colourfulness and gentleness of the people, but also of their poverty, anarchy and slovenliness. The countryside of scrub, banana groves and tobacco fields and the towns, with their Wild West atmosphere, reminded me of the Caribbean borderlands of Colombia and Venezuela.We drove furiously along 200kms of pot-holed roads, pausing only to repair a puncture and to catch a Mekong ferry.Phnom Penh, brutally evacuated by the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in 1975, has now regained a population of about a million. I was warned that after dark in Phnom Penh one should not carry too many dollars and that outside the capital one should travel only by aeroplane.
I decided to risk crossing the Vietnamese land frontier. Before applying for my visa at the elegant Cambodian Embassy in Saigon, I talked to the British Embassy about the rumours of an impending civil war between the private armies of the Royalist and Socialist co-prime ministers.

Yet for many years, during the time of the killing fields, only intrepid journalists dared to visit. Today a trickle of tourists have started to return, but still everyone is wary. To ring Britain from Barcelona you must dial 07 44+ area code minus the first 0+ number.. HAVING recently retired and feeling in need of some adventure, I have just been to Cambodia I knew why I was going.

In spite of the fact that it is only just recovering from the ravages of war, it remains a country of immense charm and beauty. During our Middle Ages it was the centre of a great empire and in Angkor Wat, the largest religious construction in the world, it boasts a great architectural treasure. City tourist offices can be found in Barcelona airport (Mon-Sat 9.30am to 3pm), on the Placa de Catalunya (just opposite the Banco de Espana; daily 9am-9pm), with the main office being at the Estaci Sants train station (Mon-Fri 8am-8pm, Sat & Sun 8am- 2pm; tel 491 4431). The weekly Guia del Ocio (available from all good news stands) offers the best information for what’s going on in the arts, all types of sport and the gay world, as well as more general city life.By TelephoneTo ring Barcelona from Britain you must dial 00 34 3+ number. Both prices are per person based on two people sharing a room and include flights, taxes and breakfast.INFORMATIONThe Spanish National Tourist Office in London (22 Manchester Square, London W1M 5AP, tel 0171 486 8077) can supply a variety of maps, pamphlets and special interest leaflets on Barcelona.