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I no longer remember what is was like getting on the boat, nor where, in relation to our beach, the boat dock was. What I do remember is being ON the boat. Gerry calls it a torpedo boat because of its shape. It was long and narrow with an enclosed cabin. And therein lies the problem.

On the river trip from Siam Reap to Phnom Penh, it had been possible to get out of the cabin onto the sides of the boat to get fresh air, stretch the legs and so forth. Gerry made good use of that privilege, Jan only once or twice. But on the TBFH that possibility was precluded by the speed of the boat combined with the sea conditions.

A real sailor might have found the sea relatively calm that day. But for thos of us in that cabin it felt quite the opposite. First the boat travelled at an angle. The entire boat seemed to be leaning either to its right or left side while of course rising and falling from front to back. It made it hard for even the strongest stomach to resist throwing up and there weren't very many of those around. That meant that pretty soon the smell in the cabin was rancid and sour.

For Jan, the only solution was to fix her eyes on the horizon, what little of it could be glimpsed through the fogged up windows. In that way she could ignore what was going on inside the cabin and convince her stomach that all was well with the world, unsteady though it seemed.

Gerry is of the strong stomach kind and only suffered frustration at being penned inside. We both worried about what would happen if the boat hit something and capsized. We doubted that anyone would get out. The rows of seats were six deep and if, like Jan, you were by the window, getting out would be a nightmare. But there was nothing we could do but pray and that doesn't seem very useful when you don't believe in God.

Finally, however, we arrived at our destination. But instead of the nightmare being over, a new one was beginning. It was hard to get our bags from the luggage hold, but Gerry managed it and then young men started trying to grab our bags from us to put on their small boat. Those of us who were going on to Thailand needed to take a small water taxi to the border town. It was quite funny seeing these young men jumping around from boat to boat throwing bags in every direction and the customers trying desperately to follow their bags. We got ourselves to the small beach and from there negotiated with a young man to take us. Only then did we give up our bags to him.

The taxi ride was serene by comparison to the TBFH. We were in the open. We could see and touch our bags. There was always the small worry, however, that our taxi would take us somewhere isolated and kill us and rob us. How can you tell when someone has such an object in mind? We don't think you can, so endeavoured to ignore it. Our taxi-driver was honest, brought us to shore but to our great disappointment we weren't THERE yet.

From this point we had to take a taxi and once again began the practice of stealing bags to get a customer. The water taxis colluded of course, giving our bags away to all and sundry. It was all we could do to guard our bags, get them and ourselves off the boat and negotiate with our self-appointed taxi-driver. But we managed it and sank down with a sigh of relief into the taxi's back seat. Only ten more minutes and we were at the border.

That's when we saw the sign for the Kaoh Kong Casino Hotel.