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In many ways, the Cambodian capital has completely earned its reputation. Few other places in the world can rival Phnom Penh's traffic in illegal weapons, heroin, child prostitution and money-laundering. Local English-language newspapers regularly advertise consulting companies that, for a fee, help expatriates and visiting businessmen negotiate with kidnappers. While neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam are making ventures into information technology and manufacturing, the hottest new Cambodian business at the moment is a swift black-market trade in human organs for medical transplant.

Backpackers collect such facts like souvenirs to support their own sordid experiences. In Laos, I met three Australians who proudly wore Cambodian army uniforms that they'd purchased off the backs of border guards. In Siem Reap, I met an English girl who spoke glowingly of a week spent tagging along with a U.N. mine defusing team. In Bangkok, I met an American who'd paid $100 to shoot a B-40 rocket at a water buffalo. No Cambodian tourist experience is complete, it seems, without such hints of the bizarre or the dangerous.

Although Phnom Penh's prostitution scene doesn't garner much serious mention among backpackers (who tend to maintain an unspoken code of sexual correctness -- if only in the verbal sense), it is certainly one of the more thriving Cambodian industries of the 1990s. Interestingly, the modern brothels of Phnom Penh got their biggest boost in 1992, when 20,000 U.N. troops from more than 30 countries arrived to maintain peace in preparation for Cambodia's 1993 presidential elections. Prostitutes had to be imported from Vietnam to meet the overwhelming demands of peacekeeper libidos. By the end of their two-year tenure in Cambodia, four times as many U.N. soldiers had contracted HIV as were killed by combat hostilities or accidents.

The departure of the U.N. peacekeepers in 1994 resulted in a prostitution buyer's market that lasts to this day. A basic coital session for a discerning Phnom Penh brothel customer rarely costs more than $5.

When I first arrived in the capital city after two weeks in the Cambodian northwest -- before I met Adam -- I was not yet aware of the nuances of the Phnom Penh prostitution scene. The moto driver who took me from the Tonle Sap river pier into downtown quickly set to work on dispelling my ignorance.

"Hey mister, you want cheap, beautiful girl for boom-boom?" he'd asked me less than a minute into our ride.

Boom-boom. For some reason I thought "boom-boom" was a word like "shazbat" or "boo-ya" or "Purity of Essence" -- a phrase that existed only in movies or rap songs. As soon as I heard the word, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. My moto driver took this as a good sign.

"I show you a place," he said. "Very beautiful women, only $10."

Ten dollars, I remember thinking to myself. That's the best deal yet.

In Korea, sex with a low-end prostitute starts at around $40. In the tourist areas of Bangkok, a night of sex averages about $30, not including the "bar fine" required to take the hooker out of her go-go bar. In Macau, a "special" massage can cost as much as $100. On Boracay Island in the Philippines, the line between prostitution and romance isn't so clear-cut; sex is often quietly exchanged for a week or so of food, lodging and gifts.

I know these facts not because I have a particular interest in prostitution, but because I have been living and traveling in Asia for the past three years. Because I am a male and I do most of my traveling alone, I am constantly a target for pimps and hustlers. Sometimes -- especially at tourist beaches and nightclubs -- prostitutes approach me directly. I'm never sure what to think or do when this happens. Of all the social situations in life I have been prepared for, prostitute protocol is not among them.

This is where I'd hoped Adam would come in handy.

By the time I arrived at the no-name cafe for our Saturday brothel excursion, the streets of Phnom Penh were flooded with an hour's worth of downpour. The rain still hadn't let up, and Adam's friends had already gone home.

"Is the brothel trip canceled?" I asked Adam as I jogged in from the rain.

"Well, we won't be able to get to Svay Pa in weather like this. It's 11 kilometers outside of town, and that'd be hell on the back of a moto. But I know a place within walking distance."

Donning our raincoats, Adam and I headed for Street 63, home to a number of brothels masquerading as massage parlors. As we walked, Adam told me about his experiences as an English teacher in Vietnam, his short stint in the French Foreign Legion (he was kicked out for bad eyesight) and his mild local notoriety from having appeared as a character in "Off the Rails in Phnom Penh," Amit Gilboa's hopelessly sensationalistic (but largely fact-based) 1998 book about sex, drugs and expats in Cambodia's capital.

Adam seemed somewhat proud of his depiction in the book. "I'm cast as a sensitive type who genuinely cares about the girls I sleep with," he told me as we walked.

"Is that true?"

"Sure. It may just be casual sex, but for me it's always emotional. Even with a hooker in a brothel, there is still a chemistry going on. Sex is only good for me when I can exchange emotion. People say, 'Don't fall in love with a prostitute,' but I need to fall in love for those 15 minutes, or I won't have a good time."

"So you do this for emotional reasons?"

"Well, emotion is part of it. Most of the girls who work here are Vietnamese, and I love the exoticness of the Vietnamese body. Flat little stomachs and such great skin. But as much as anything I like the power over another person that the experience provides. I don't mistreat the girls, but part of the thrill is that I pay money, and I can do what I want with them for 15 minutes."

We walked through the rain-swollen side streets of Phnom Penh until we came to an innocuous corner storefront on Street 63, called the Lay-Lay. "There's a girl here I'm looking for," Adam told me as we approached the front door. "She's really incredible."

"What's special about her?"

"Well, after a while, these experiences can all seem the same. You know, 10 to 15 minutes in one of three standard positions; not much interaction at all. About 50 percent of the time, it's like the girls aren't even there."

"But the rest of the time it's good?"

"Well, maybe 20 percent of the girls are good. And 20 percent of that 20 percent are great. This girl at the Lay-Lay is great. Top 10 all time, for sure."

"What's her name?"

"No. 51."

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