I wrote this post after it was all sorted out as I didn’t want to worry the people I love that are reading this blog, but now it’s all over I can look back on it as one of those things that at the time test you, but also get you in touch of a side of a place you would not normally be able to access.

I was out one night watching Cambodia play Mianmar. I have told the Cambodia Football Federation that I can set them up a website so I needed to do some research – like what colours they play in, little things like that.

Anyhow, one thing led to another and I ended up having a fine evening with a Dutch university prof and a few other random people in various bars. I returned to the hotel to find the front door locked, but managed to rouse them with a few knocks on the front door.

On getting to my room I found that my laptop, mobile phone and rucksack were gone. The kind soul that had liberated my gear had been nice enough to dump as much stuff as possible from the bag so I still had most of my gear.

My first thought was that someone from the hotel had tea leafed my gear, so I insisted we get to the police over and get this sorted out. The police arrived in an hour and so I was then in my room with a few deliberating policeman and the manager of the hotel.

Now I must confess that I had left one of my windows open to dry some extremely smelly socks that I had washed. On sober investigation you could see footprints in the balcony of the property next door so it was becoming clear that some rogue had shimmied up the front of the hotel and had swiped my stuff.

I had not been so negligent though. On leaving the room I made sure that the right hand window by the balcony was closed as the left hand window could only be accessed after sliding across a very steep sloping roof. We were also around 20metres off of the ground, so whoever did this didn’t care much for their lives as it took some work to get into the room. I shooed the police, manager and entourage out and climbed into bed, it would be a busy day the next day of interviews with the police and negotiations with the hotel, so I wanted to be up to it – I was also supposed to be going to Halong bay but this cancelled that appointment. For a moment my love affair with Vietnam dried up, but not for long. It’s only stuff.