On my first day in Ho Chi Minh I’d already started with a sore throat but by the second afternoon in Phnom Penh I was shivering uncontrollably and resigned myself to bed, covered in several duvets and the major contents of both our rucksacks.

I woke up in the early hours burning hot, but curiously not sweating and spent the rest of the night flitting between too cold and too hot, confused by bizarre, feverish dreams.

I took paracetamol regularly to ease the fever and for a while it would ease but my temperature never decreased below 38C (according to the thermometer H picked up in the morning).

By 5pm the next day I was over 39C so H decided it was time to go to hospital, something I’d been putting off all day, the thought of the heat, the humidity, the 30 minute tuk-tuk ride across Phnom Penh, the traffic fumes etc etc was unbearable.

Finally we got to see a doctor at the Royal Rattanak international hospital and I explained my symptoms, he took some blood and a nasal swab and we waited.

He called us back into the office and immediately handed over surgical masks to me, H and the nurse, “we should all wear these” he explained while pulling one over his face.

The diagnosis – Influenza Type A – the subset which includes swine flu (although they can’t identify this positively in Cambodia, samples would have to be sent to Thailand and would take a week, by which time it would be too late to matter which type of flu it was (there are 20 or so different types in subset A). Oh, and a secondary bacterial infection in my throat.

He prescribed me a cocktail of drugs (including Tamiflu) and I walked back into the reception area to pick up my prescription and pay to find that all the staff were now wearing surgical masks, they really weren’t taking risks!

Anyway, a couple of days in bed saw me right and we’ve finally made our way across to Siem Reap to enjoy the temples / rain, we’re praying that H doesn’t come down with it too though, that would just about write off the entire holiday to flu!