May 17th 2010
Today we had our first experience of being fleeced as a tourist in South East Asia, probably not bad considering we’ve been here for 9 weeks, but disappointing nonetheless.
We had arranged with our tuk-tuk driver to visit the floating village near Siem Reap. We had seen Karen’s photographs of a trip she did to a floating village on stilts and wanted to visit the same one. Unfortunately, not knowing the name of that village, we ended up visiting the village of Chong Khneas on Tonle Sap lake, which turned out to be the wrong village. This would have been ok, except that it was very similar to many other floating villages we’ve seen elsewhere and to add insult to injury we paid $30 for the privilage.
As promised our tuk-tuk driver, Lucky took us out to the boat quay to catch the boat to travel to the centre of the lake to take a look at the floating village. When we got to the payment kiosk we were told it was $15 dollars each, we hummed and aahed because £20 seemed a lot to pay for a boat trip, but since we were already there we ended up paying.
We soon wished we hadn’t bothered. Not only was there very litte water in the river leading up to the lake, but there were also quite a number of boats making the journey. The river is not very clean meaning our driver had to stop a few times to unwind plastic bags from his motor and then because the water was so shallow get in and push the boat back into deeper water. We had hardly left the dock when we had to stop for gas and the driver quickly told us that he used tips from the tourists to go to school.
The asking for money on top of what we had already paid didn’t stop there. Part of the ’tour’ was to take us to a school where they expected tourists to pay for books and pens for the children so they could learn - we declined, especially because not having expected to pay so much we literally only had a dollar left in our pocket. Next stop was allegedly a fish and crocodile farm, but in reality was simply a couple of fish tanks and dried crocodile skins next to a floating restaurant. Our driver tried to tell us we had to buy something here, so we asked to leave.
With all the extras we were being asked to pay, you wonder where the $30 for the boat trip was actually going. We spoke to Lucky about it when we got back and he says that the company running the boats was a Korean company and they had built a new road and boat quay, so it seems the money is going to pay for these things rather than any money going to the people in the villages. I don’t mind paying for these tours, but it makes me angry when the only people who benefit are the investors, and foreign ones at that, at least some of the money should be going to the people who live in the village and whose lives are disrupted by the hundreds of tour boats travelling through their village.
The village is on Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Asia, which ultimately flows into the Mekong. There are around 600 families living here, the vast majority of which are Vietnamese. According to our driver, during the wet season they move further down the river and live besides the riverbanks rather than in the centre of the lake which rises from just half a metre of water at this time of year to 11 metres during the wet season.
We took a look online when we got back to see if we could find other experiences of this village and found this. Seems that we were right to avoid the school trip.
Back on our tuk-tuk, Lucky wanted to take us to his home to meet his wife and children, but also had another temple for us to see on the way.
The temple that we stopped at was older than Angkor Wat and unfortunately most of the stone carvings had been destroyed. It was still quite impressive though, since the main building was still standing. When we arrived a group of lads were unloading some musical instruments from a truck to do a performance in the remains of the temple this evening. We were lucky enough to hear one of them practicing on the wooden xylophone-type instrument.
Back on the road and we headed across the river to a small village on the outskirts of Siem Reap. Lucky explained that he had just bought some land here and moved out of his mother-in-law’s house where he and his family were living previously. He hasn’t yet been able to save the money to build a house on the plot of land he owns so the family are currently living beneath two large tarpaulins. He has a beautiful wife, one-year old twin daughters and a three year old daughter and despite the lack of housing, his wife was so happy to finally live away from her mother and four sisters. It really was lovely to meet them all and his wife spoke really good English, having worked in the hotel industry in Siem Reap before 3 children took up all her time. Again it struck us that these people have so little, but are always so happy and ready with their smiles and their time, a real antithesis to what we had experienced first thing this morning.
After visiting the family, it was another afternoon back at the hotel, enjoying the cool pool.