Another update (after the article below was written): Great news! Paul was flown out of Cambodia by the British embassy and arrived back in the United Kingdom just in time for Christmas, so he's finally free. It's another long story which I will save for another time. Perhaps I'll get the chance to do an interview with Paul at some point, so that he can tell his story in his own words. If so I will try to record the discussion and post it on Youtube.
It's been more than a month since I wrote a piece explaining the situation with Paul from the UK, a friend I know through Facebook, who got stuck in Cambodia in a tough situation due to a series of unfortunate circumstances. If you don't know the story already you can read my previous article here.
But here's the short version: Paul was traveling from Vietnam to Thailand to work at a hostel and crossed through Cambodia on his way to Thailand. When he arrived at the Cambodia border and tried to enter Thailand, they discovered that someone else had previously visited Thailand using his name and birth date, who also looked like him. This person had overstayed his visa and then been deported, to Germany apparently. The Thai authorities accused Paul of being this other person, fined him $1,000 for the previous overstay, wouldn't allow him to enter Thailand and kicked him back to Cambodia. The amount they fined him was almost all the money he had at the time. He couldn't afford to buy a new Cambodia visa, so instead walked into the country and has now been stuck there for more than two months illegally.
