Siem Reap

Siem Reap, a Cambodian town just north of the Tonle Sap river that exists only to support tourism to the nearby Angkor Wat, offered me incredible lessons in backpacking. My host, owner of the Two Dragons hostel, is one of the expatriates in Siem Reap, and one of the few Americans expats here. Most other expats are French, a bizarre aftereffect of French colonialism. (Another aftereffect is the delicious butter and lemongrass flavors of French-infused Khmer food.)

The effects of the US recession have been felt strongly here in Siem Reap. American tourism sustains much of the economy of the town and the neighboring Angkor Wat. Decline in this tourism has been only slightly offset by increasing tourism from rapidly developing Asian countries and by tourists from European countries with favorable exchange rates. Most tourists that I have seen came from Korea,
China, Germany, and the UK. Other tourists who I've met were an older couple from Perth in Australia and a Italian girl studying in Cambodia. Hostels run by Cambodians are also owned by them, and have been compensated by putting off repairs and hiring more family members. Foreigners cannot own land in Cambodia, so hostels owned by expats sit on land rented from Cambodians; they have suffered more. Two hostels shut here in the past five months; many others have been strapped for cash.

Hostel rating sites seem to dictate the hostel market here. My hostel owner tells me that "he knows for a fact" that the hostel owner across the street pays an English-speaking person to write favorable reviews of his hostel on Tripadvisor.com. A trend common in Vietnam, he says, is writing bad reviews for competing hostels. Websites like Yelp, Amazon, and eBay have addressed this problem by letting reviewers rate each other, rate other reviews, and promoting frequent and quality reviewers. I guess this trend hasn't caught among websites for hostels.