Where to begin unravelling the shadowy, painful layers of Uy and Chamnan's story? It is not straightforward. Uy had greatly underestimated the task of clawing her way out of hardship her stricken expression as she talks suggests she also miscalculated the personal costs of selling her daughter's body to try. After she'd paid her sick husband's medical bills, given cash to her ageing parents and bought Chamnan a gold necklace to 'raise her spirits', there wasn't much left. The money that had represented a life-changing sum – equivalent to around five years' salary in her home village in Kandal province – soon trickled away. Uy received cash payment in full, but her planned salon never materialised. By the third day, Uy recalls, Chamnan was so weak and distressed that the man summoned a doctor on his payroll to give her painkillers and a vitamin shot 'so she had the strength to keep going until the end of the week'. She was allowed to call her mother once a day. He installed her in a hotel room on Phnom Penh's outskirts and visited her many times to have sex.
He bought Chamnan for six days and nights. The man was a police general who frequented the beer garden where Uy worked as a kitchen help, she says.
