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As with Phnom Penh, motos are the preferred mode of transport to and from the sights of Battambang - at around $10 per day, you get a driver, guide and guard.

Along with Jason, our new companion we'd met on the boat from Siem Reap (the poor sod who had to sit beside the engine), we attempted to hire moto drivers with more than a modicum of knowledge of the English language: Mr Tin, Jasons driver, was the elder statesman - a man who had lived through the atrocities and who provided an occasional insight into the horrors of those days. Dharma, Isobels driver, was a teenager and had mastered numerous cockney phrases including 'Diamond Geezer' and 'Frog and Toad'. Mine, meanwhile, mumbled the occasional phrase but even his name was incomprehensible - Seung (I think) - I'd screwed up. But the extent of the screw up was yet to dawn on us...

Dharma and my driver, Seung-I-think, hung out at the nearby Royal hotel - a modern building built to house NGOs (Non Government Agencies) that sported a rooftop restaurant. It was in this restaurant that we'd been introduced to them by a wayward spirit from London called Pete, whom Jason and I had met over a lunchtime beer. Jasons driver, Mr Tin meanwhile, hung out at our hotel, The Chhaya - another NGO hotel but devoid of a rooftop restaurant.

We met Jason downstairs and prepared to head off to the Royal to meet our drivers - it was here that the tattooed owner of our hotel, Mr Lee, informed us that he had two drivers ready to take us to the Killing Caves. To say he did not take our choice of drivers from another hotel well is an understatement - he went off on one...

"How dare you use another hotels driver... we have many here, they wait for days for fare and you take your business elsewhere - this is wrong, you must not..." blah blah. I looked at him incredulously - but he was serious.

So we tried to placate him, explaining that we had hired the others on a recommendation of a friend who was staying at the royal. At this he started waving his arms around and shouted "WHO IS THIS FOREIGNER, WHAT IS HIS NAME... MY FRIEND IS THE CHIEF OF POLICE - YOU GIVE ME HIS ROOM NUMBER AND I WILL HAVE HIM PUT IN JAIL"

Not wishing to see Pete banged up for such a minor misdemeanour, we told Mr Lee that our friend was on his way to Phnom Penh already and that we had a deal with our drivers we could not back out of - perhaps we could use his drivers some other time?? He sneered and turned away. We left, worried our gear might get pillaged or burnt...

We expected animosity between our respective drivers but, to our surprise, Mr Tin and Dharma were good friends despite their alignment to opposite hotels.

Dharma explained the Battambang turf war that we'd uncovered - Mr Lee, the owner of our hotel, had been a moto driver himself once. All the drivers had an unwritten rule - whoever transported a customer to a hotel (whichever it was) would be given the right to transport them to the local attractions (which explained the 'free rides' offered to the hotel).

Mr Lee had broken this rule - accepting clients and then handing the driving jobs to his friends. This had polarized the moto community.

When we stopped at the local petrol station (a stall with litre bottles of petrol on a rack), I asked Mr Tin and Dharma what they thought of Mr Lee - Dharma, I believe, most eloquently the man - in a cockney accent he simply said "He's a W@nker".

Dharma, for one, has mastered the English language... Enough said.

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