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I entered the Kingdom of Cambodia via the road less traveled - not even a road, really, but the Mekong River. My travel companion Emily and I had gotten up at daybreak after sleeping fitfully in a “culturally interesting” hotel in Cai Be, on the Vietnam side of the border. Neither of us are early risers by nature, but that morning we woke up without complaint, anxious to part ways with the water leaks, acrid smells and tiny swarming bugs that had shared our room. Together with some other tourists from Canada and Australia, Emily and I clambered aboard a small riverboat with folding beach chairs instead of seats: pretty comfortable, it turned out, for a morning trip up the Mekong Delta.

We glided past families living along the river, and on the river - in houseboats that resembled floating versions of the thatched-roof shacks along the water’s edge, complete with lines of flapping laundry. We passed water buffalo, chicken hatcheries, and lots and lots of smiling locals who ran along the shoreline, waving frantically and laughing at the foreigners taking their pictures. Sailing by them, it occurred to me that we were just crossing through - Westerners so fascinated by this centuries-old lifestyle, taking everything in - but to them this was just another day of their lives. Another day of swimming in the water’s edge, fishing for tonight’s dinner, washing clothes and dishes in the muddy Mekong, laying rice paper out to dry on bamboo grids. What must they think of we tourists from half the world away, wearing hats and sunglasses and SPF 70 sunblock, snapping pictures of them as though they were celebrities?

Close to noontime, our boat guide, who spoke only Khmer, threaded his way through the folding chairs to collect passports and the $22 Cambodian visa fee. He filled out some paperwork at the back of the boat, trying in vain to shield it from the droplets that kept splashing up and smudging the ink. Our boat sailed through a thicket of palms and turned a corner to the left, and a small blocky building rose up on the bank: the international border checkpoint.

We hauled our luggage up a slippery wooden ramp with thin slats nailed in for traction, and a bunch of boys came running down to greet us, yanking at our bags, trying to get us to hand them over so they could tote them up in exchange for a tip. We headed toward the customs office, which had appalling bathrooms and an open room with an airport-style x-ray machine where border guards waited to scan our luggage. Before I could get there, a peasant woman blocked my way and told me in broken English that she was the money changer.

“You?” It was as sketchy a money-changing situation as I’d ever encountered, and I looked dubiously over at a nearby border guard. He nodded his head. “Money changer,” he confirmed. I’d been told I could only change Vietnamese dong at the border, and I was carrying a lot of it with me, having stupidly withdrawn a bunch of dong from an ATM just yesterday. “Is there an office here that changes money?”

He pointed to the woman. “That lady. She’s the money changer.”

All right. I knew I was going to get fleeced, but I was okay with throwing a few dollars the way of a sweet-looking peasant woman, smiling up at me from under her conical palm-frond hat. I handed over about $75 in dong and she gave me a ridiculously thick stack of Cambodian riel in return. I passed my bags through the x-ray machine and then walked over to a tiny café next to the border station, no more than an open-sided thatched-roof hut, where all the tourists could gather and wait for a Cambodian boat to take us onward. “That’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve done so far on this trip,” I said idly to the others as I sorted out the damp bills. The kid who’d carried my bag tugged at me, wanting his tip, and I handed him a 500-riel bill. He scowled at me and tugged again. “That’s all you’re getting, kid.” Judging from the stack the woman had given me, that should have been a few bucks, definitely enough for a short hike with my bag.

“What’s the exchange rate?” I asked some of the other tourists from our boat, who, unlike me, had bothered to find out these things out in advance.

“About 4 dong is a riel.”

I looked up to where the money-changing lady had been standing, and my stomach dropped. She was gone. “This is definitely the dumbest thing I’ve done so far on this trip,” I muttered as I started to count. I ended up with about $15 in riel - most of it in 500-riel bills which equaled about 12 cents apiece. No wonder that kid was so pissed. I was, too, but mostly at myself. “I knew I was going to get jacked,” I complained to the others, who had gathered around a low table eating fried rice and fresh fruits, “but I didn’t think I was going to get this jacked.”

“You should go tell the border guards,” said one of the other tourists, a Canadian woman on vacation with her family. “What she did is illegal!”

I wasn’t counting on getting much help from the border guards, and sure enough, when I tried to complain, the guy who had initially directed me to the woman suddenly spoke no English. “This sucks,” I whined to Emily when I rejoined her at the café. “I mean, I would have given her the 50 bucks if she’d asked.” Even as I said it, I knew I wouldn’t have - a few, maybe, but definitely not $50 - which is exactly why she conned it from me instead of begging. Unlike me, she wasn’t stupid.

After a while the Cambodian boat pulled up, and we lugged our bags again to the side of the river. This time, the boat didn’t pull up to the dock, but to the river’s edge instead. The primitive gangplank from before suddenly seemed not so bad anymore as I surveyed the slick clay riverbank that led to the boat. How were we going to get our bags down that? The kids swarmed around us again, tugging at our luggage - oh, right. Of course. One little boy who looked no more than 5 took my heavy backpack and scampered down with it, into the boat. I grunted and slid at a considerably slower pace than he, grabbing at a bamboo tree to keep my balance, and made my way onto the bow without dropping my other bag, somehow. My 5-year-old porter held his hand out for a tip, and I gave him four of the 500-riel bills - he scowled and demanded more, as the first kid had, but I shook my head. “Tell it to the lady who changes the money.” I felt a little bad about being such a tightwad until I got into the boat, located my backpack stashed under a seat, and saw a couple of its zippers open, its pockets obviously rifled through in a hurry. Later I found out that border guards frequently work with the local peasants and kids, getting a big kickback from everything taken from the tourists.

I didn’t have anything in my backpack the kid would have wanted - unless he was interested in my dirty laundry - and $50 wasn’t much to have lost, in the grand scheme of things. But it left me with a deeply disappointed feeling that I knew I’d have to shake if I wanted to enjoy Cambodia. These people are poor beyond anything I could ever imagine, I thought as I watched the border station get smaller and smaller in the boat’s wake. I considered how the Khmer Rouge left the Cambodian people devastated and the country in ruins; how it must take so many generations to recover from that degree of trauma; how I couldn’t blame them one bit for feeling like they have to rob the clueless tourists for everything they can. They’re desperate. And I? I had enough money to buy some cold Angkor beers from the boat captain’s wife. I had a river cruise to enjoy, and dinner and a decent hotel waiting for me afterward. I had several days ahead to explore Phnom Penh, Angkor Wat, and Bangkok. I was fine. More than fine. I was lucky.

Read about Phnom-Penh - City of Contradictions