Dienstag, 11. Dezember 2007


Angkor Wat, one of the famous sites of the ancient Angkor empire (8th to 13th c.)

home of poor ppl, trying to sell you too silly stuff for too much money

Siem Reap ("Siam defeated"): touristy vs poverty

Siem Reap, the city next to Angkor, a huge complex with dozens of temples, ruins and impressive memorabilias, but also hords of tourists and local (aggressive) sellers.

As soon as you get into the city (coming from the scam-border of Poi Pet/Thailand), you're struck by finally a good road (compare this to the dirt-path with crater-big loopholes before), eletric lighting at the main road (and almost only there; althought there are also lighting posts on the street to Angkor Wat, they aren't used) and nice-looking buildings.

Seemingly almost everybody tries to rip you off, you the Westerner from whom one can easily extract money.
This starts as soon as you get dropped off from the bus, 6km away from the border (still in Thailand); so you need to get a tuk-tuk, which drives you to the border (80Baht per Person/tuktuk); and of course, this tuk-tuk conveniently drops you off there, where the scammers want to make you believe that you cannot get a VISA (20US$) for Cambodia "on arrival" anymore but since they are the "friendly volunteers" they want to sell you a Visa for 1200 ThaiBaht (40US$) from a Cambodian consulate in Thailand (which easily takes 3 days).
So, I left them and headed to the border, checked swiftly the Thai-border, walked to the Cambodian side, where noone tells you where to get this fucking visa from which booth. A guy points at a house, in which a police official first asks for your passport (not to clear it and help; but to check from where you are in order to estimate how rich you may be and how much you could be overcharged or extorted!!! He wanted also 1200Thai Baht; no US dollar, probably because of the recent $ depreciation). After a row, I left for the right VISA booth, told again my story that the official Cambodian immigration police says a visa is 20US$, but the bureaucrats and policemen on site demand 1000 Baht (= 33 US$) or 20US$ and 200B, and the latter I had to pay, otherwise would get granted accessin Cambodia.
Then, next red tape station was the stamping and entry-/exit cards; while you get photographed by a super-mdern webcam (same for Angkor entrance [!] and Suvarnabhumi in Thailand). At least this was for free, as well as the quick 1.5km journey to the state-run tourist room (not office…), where you can book a bus or taxi onwards). I took a cab with two germans (splitting the fixed 60$ cost into 3 times 20$); a bus ticket would be 12$, it was said, eventhough there are also private companies and tickets for 5$ acc. to Lonely Planet…

On the cab (>12 year old Toyota Camry), just 20minutes driving and one tire was gone… took 20min to repair for the driver. It gives you a hint how fucking dusty and rocky the roads are.
Despite being promised to be dropped off at the booked hostels, the driver and his tuk-tuk connection tell us that taxis are not allowed to enter the city center (such a silly lie did noone believe anyway..), but tired from the journey, we embarked the tuks (for free, at least); only to see that they are free in order to skim us and convince us to hire them as driver for out upcoming Angkor experience.

The Cambodian challenge went on in the bathroom of my otherwise relatively ok hostel: I wanted to wash my hands, tap water on and peng, the pipe (a gummy pipe) broke off, causing some disorder (at least seured briefly thereafter).

If you stroll to the Psar Chaa, the olöd market, it's all trendy-Western styled tourist restaurants, very pricy (ok, roughly a bit below Western prices, but some are even more expensive; incredible for Cambodia, one of the poorest sates in the world). Funny way at least, that ppl here seem constantly smiling and making fun of foreigners. But by smiling back, I got to know a smart Khmer, who did explain me some basic things about Cambodia.

Tenets:
- Locals overcharge foreigners whenever they can
- Tuk-tuk drivers, hostel managers, taxi companies frequently cooperate to upsell
- State concrete elements of a deal and set the price fixed in advance, otherwise you become a target to get cheated
- SR is a kind of a 2-class society (west vs. locals)


Next time more about Siem Reap

ADI