At 12, Pov knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the seasoned prostitute he has become. 'They like girls,' he said, gesturing to four middle-aged Frenchmen. 'Small girls.' He also knows a sun-blackened and tattered woman a few metres away. She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger.
As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia's choking capital is a slow-moving river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm in arm, tourists gaze at one of Asia's most beautiful sunsets and children like Pov ply their trade, zeroing in on what they call rich, foreign 'lady-boys', or gay men.
In the crowd of mainly brown-skinned people, white men stand out like flies on a cake. Some are alone, wearing hats and jackets in the stifling evening heat, strolling or sitting on the river wall, eyeing the crowd.
A man with a Liverpool accent calls Cambodia a 'sweet shop' before becoming suspicious and hurrying away. These are no idle boasts in a city where 12-year-old girls are hawked for US$20 to US$40, but the ages are often much lower. Campaigners against prostitution in Cambodia say children as young as three are still being trafficked and rented out all over the country, mostly to Asian men but increasingly to foreign tourists pouring in through some of the most open borders in the world.
'I know of a brothel with 100 underaged girls run by high-ranking police and military officials,' said Don Brewster, an American Christian who moved to Phnom Penh with his wife in 2004 to set up a shelter for sexually abused children. 'There are brothels in some parts of the country where the clients are brought in buses.'
After a decade during which Cambodia earned its unwanted reputation as a haven for paedophiles, anti-trafficking campaigners have recently begun to bare their teeth. Dozens of foreign men have been imprisoned or sent back to courts in Europe and the US, many by the tough deputy head of Phnom Penh's anti-trafficking bureau, Keo Thea. The 2002 deportation to Vietnam of faded glam-rock star Gary Glitter, who was renting a house in the city centre, also served notice, said the then minister of women's affairs Mu Sochua, that Cambodia was no longer open for business to the world's child abusers.