Vietnamese Troop Withdrawal - 1989 ​Muddy-black wake up coffee and trudge up Achar Mean Boulevard under the cover of a dawn, hungover-in-darkness, before the government informants take to the streets to report on unauthorised travel. A stomach lining of rice porrige, Bear-Brand sweetened tea and up into the engulfing stench of an excrement'n'spit-stained caboose as wheels roll and a shot of steam signals the moment for dust-covered vendors to throw their leaf-wrapped and skewered wares into the faces leaning from disintegrating doorways. Iron Horse relics-cum-weed-beds slide past and derring-do motorcyclists duck and weave under the clanging boom-gates before spaces open up into paddies of green. ​Up on the roof eat deep-fried baby birds that the Khmers have killed after they escaped winter in the USSR washed down with the juice of too many coconuts that curdles in your gut in the heat and makes you want to puke while trying to figure out unfathomable Khmer card games. Hours pass like days and the corrugated iron roof griddles your flesh while steaming sweat trapped under your kramar cleanses your pores with the efficiency of any third world facial. The girl vending raw chicken embryos faults momentarily, leaps from roof to roof between jolting carriages and we slip lethargically through the valium landscape towards a horizon fast blackening with monsoon clouds. Hand out cigarettes from the third packet in as many hours and snap AK-laden soldiers casting shade over a mother and sheltering infant when I get a bug in my eye and they offer to dig it out with a sliver of bamboo lying at my feet. No thanks. They persevere, and fearing loss of sight on this lurching spine, I walk. Skies of purple and the last of the hanger-onners struggle to clamber down over the sharp corrugated ridge, waiting hands pulling them in through open voids before the first raindrops explode and evaporate on the surface beneath my feet. Thunder-clap spooked troops huddle with me under perished plastic and cling tighter with each fork of lighting that stabs at the floodwaters around us, muscles tensed. Pelting rain cuts like nine tails through the sheet and snap-frozen figures in faded fatigues fire frenziedly up at the demons above. Man and Beast locked in a war of timpanic proportions. Suck cool rain through sodden Liberation fags that won't stay lit and commit scenes to memory that I can't shoot through steamed up lenses tucked inside dripping shirt. Share the warmth of a flickering zippo and wait for the sun to see us on our way again. Dusk creeps up on us curling around the hills and over gullies of scrap metal, buckled carriages lying motionless below, "Pol Pot's doing", and fire flies, like scores of chain-smokers wandering in the blackness, hang in our wake as we cross more water and pull into the station. Pouthisat at nightfall. West of the Tonle Sap. Gladly accept an offer of a camp bed in the local school-master's office. Voices and torches close to midnight spell trouble and the foreign-affairs department interpreter says his boss wants to know how I got here and where is my guide and why aren't I in the government guest-house with all the other journalists who have come to report on the withdrawal? But it's late and he'll wait 'til morning to get the story. I must go with them and stay with everyone else. Fixed breakfast and question time over a Nikon'n'Sony-Pro-rash-blotched table with the same advice echoing from the mouths of eavesdropping press-people. "You should stay here like they say and wait for the Vietnamese parade at eight." The Government man baulks when I say I have no money to pay for his driver and guide and for the first time we understand each other. He has a guy with a bike take me back to the train station. Battambang-bound and I leave the press-pack waiting for the festivities. Two hours of the same green paddies later we can see the first vehicles trundle past on a pock-marked route 5 and the only thing I have to offer as a parting gift to an officer that commandeers a step-through to take me into Moung is a cheap and clogged-up Chinese fountain pen which he adds to his breast-pocket with a smile like he'd just gotten another stripe. In town the welcome is rousing. As the only 'Barang' to have made it to their send-off party, my efforts at blending to the crowd are doomed. Beaming Ray-Banned provincial heads grab this token 'whitey', introducing him as a VIP from the foreign press corps which brings howls of delight from the surging crowd that spills over the entire road, blocking it in an effort to see me better. The tea keeps coming while the military police strip leaves from springy branches and whip the legs of children and adults alike in an effort to keep them at bay while local photographers click us for posterity. ​They've got the whole reception planned but it's time for me to leave. With gifts of oranges tied carefully into my kramar it's up on to the slow-rolling runner-board of a Vietnamese truck as it passes the roadside marquee, it's labouring engine slowly but surely drowning out the cheering Khmers we are leaving behind. Red dust swallows us. Swallows us up and shadows us all the way to Pouthisat, where the press have long since been relocated, and beyond some clicks short of Krakor. Black'n'blue all over. Pot-holes, ridges, legs wedged 'tween bars and planks; not easy hanging on. Wait, wait for it, another bruise and a sixtieth of a second later, wind and dust screaming in my face, sun laughing a wicked laugh and impatient Viets crowd 'round bucket-blue'n'sloshing sodium sulphate over all and in helmets. Smelly, it bleaches and burns, stinging and red dust'n'mosquitoes stick to flapping-in-the-wind emulsions. Another pothole, swerve, spill more. Fingerprints and neg into the bucket for who knows how many hours too many. They're smiling again. Don't let go of my legs, I'll die if we brake.