Cambodia: Visiting Angkor Wat and Helping the Poor

Very often travellers do not get the opportunity to engage that much with the locals or get any great understanding of the local culture and the daily life. This lack of real engagement between locals and foreigners has led to reports of locals seeing themselves as inferior to foreigners or as foreigners being seen as rich people who are like aliens from another country.

by Sanura Gunatilake

“In my experience, poor people are the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.” – Muhammed Yunus

( June 27, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Angkor Wat (Siem Reap), Cambodia is both a fascinating and sobering tale given its surge of tourism and subsequent challenges it is facing. As a Sri Lankan origin Australian, it is also an interest close to home as I have spent extended periods of time living and working in Cambodia.

For many, the visit to Siem Reap is over in 3 or less days, and will be an opportunity to take away a snapshot of Angkor Wat’s ethereal silhouette from the sun’s morning rays peaking behind it, or an adventure in the ruins admiring the intricacies of stone carvings done by ancient hands. Ranking number one on Lonely Planet’s 2015 best attractions of the world list, these awe-inspiring artefacts have given Cambodia it’s national identity as being aptly named ‘Kingdom of Wonder’. Wonder is also my reaction to finding out Siem Reap, for all its splendour, is also the third poorest province out of a total 23 provinces in the country.

From its beginnings of 7,600 tourists in 1993 when it was first added to UNESCO’s world heritage list to now having recorded 2.1 million visitors in the year of 2015, Siem Reap city is one of South East Asia’s most booming cities. Yet just not far away from the city centre, the overwhelming majority of 120,000 plus inhabitants within Angkor Park that is location to the 1,000 or more temples including the Angkor Wat – are living below the poverty line. Many are on incomes of average less than $30 USD a month, and almost 70% illiteracy according to data from 2007. [i]

[Angkor Wat splashed with early morning crimson sun rays]

Engagement with the locals

Very often travellers do not get the opportunity to engage that much with the locals or get any great understanding of the local culture and the daily life. This lack of real engagement between locals and foreigners has led to reports of locals seeing themselves as inferior to foreigners or as foreigners being seen as rich people who are like aliens from another country. More organised travel establishments have therefore been including community interactions as part of their experience.

If tourists were able to witness everyday life of Angkor Park residents, of which less than 10% are reported to be able to tap into tourism for income, they would question what is going wrong. The positive spillover of revenue from tourism are marginal compared to what is possible and the further away you get from inner city Siem Reap the benefits felt are practically zero, leaving behind a huge wealth gap.

Although Angkor Wat and surrounding temples are the star attraction, tourists undoubtedly spend the largest proportion on other things. Being a tourist you are spoilt for choice as you can find a variety of cuisines, a lively night life, endless massage parlours, marketplaces galore, traditional arts performance shows and a wide range of accommodation varying from very cheap but reasonable quality guesthouses to your lavish 5 star hotels and everything in between. A majority of city dwellers have carved out a livelihood based on the back of foreign investments in one way or another such as in hospitality, construction work from the ever-multiplying hotels, tuk tuk driving, NGO’s and more. Regardless of the sheer amount of foreign money, many are outspoken about the difficulties they have to face to benefit from tourist expenditure.

Ticket Sales

$60 million US dollars was reported to be generated in ticket sales to the Angkor Park just last year in 2015 and $20 million US dollars already just in the first three months of 2016. This is a significant monetary turnover in a country that you can buy a local meal for $3USD, $1USD for a local beer or even pay $25 USD for an exquisite 5 course fine dining experience.

The management of ticket sales has up until recently this year has been a joint share with a private company called Sokimex, that has dealings with oil operations, operating under its hospitality arm called Sokha Hotels and Resorts and APSARA Authority responsible for maintenance of temples. Under its management very little spillover of benefits have been felt by the locals of Angkor Park and allegations of under-reporting of visitors and revenue as well as cash unreported had been made.[ii] After Sokimex’s 17 yearlong contract, the government has finally taken over in its push to capitalise on this money inflow. Whether any difference will be made, one can only hope and see.

Who benefit? 

The struggles were highlighted in a research conducted by Vannarith Chheang in 2007 which pointed out difficulties even for staff employed in hotels who were getting only about $100 USD a month being just enough to survive. [iii] Many hotels are owned by foreigners and rake up a large proportion of the profits. Common concerns by locals is of the popularity of organised tour groups from foreign countries such as Korea which hire their foreign-owned bus companies, eat at their foreign-owned restaurants, drink at their foreign owned places and thus most of the money goes back to their home country. It is a concern I have heard from tuk tuk drivers who are finding it more tough to work alongside the growth of these large organised tour arrangements.

Business growth is a fundamental component to Cambodia’s continued development. For the past decade and a half, majority of Cambodians who mostly live in rural areas have relied on the support of NGO projects to provide essential services and financial support. Cambodia is slowly however reaching a point where it cannot rely on foreign aid anymore as aid agencies are increasingly starting to shift money from Cambodia and redirect it to other countries such as Myanmar. Whilst aid has helped immensely, it has also helped engrain within the mindsets a dependency complex and it is a cycle that’s getting very hard to break out of. Thus Cambodia is trying to prop up its own entrepreneurial development base to create a culture of self-sustainability. As tourists we can help by supporting the pro-community establishments with our dollars. But there are significant impediments that hinder pro-community development, especially for the majority residing in rural areas even outside of Angkor Park.

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Sellers of crafts and other souvenirs also have a lot to say about the products they sell. Only about half the products sold are reported to be made from local Cambodian producers, and the rest are imported from neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and China. It is the middlemen who also take the most cut and leave little profits to the actual makers. Throughout much of rural Cambodia, there is no shortage of talented craftsman, artisans, artists and weavers who have skills that have been passed through from generations. However, they are at risk of possibly losing this knowledge as it is becoming harder to compete with imports and the youth are increasingly lacking motivation to pursue these old art forms when they can earn more steady incomes from garment factories.

The price tag of Cambodian products is much more expensive due to costing more to produce but is much better in quality, for example a $24 domestic handbag in comparison to a $7 imported one. This however makes it more difficult to sell as tourists haggle for the lowest price and usually settle for the best bargains without knowledge of what is local and what is not. However thankfully few organisations are helping keep these traditional skills alive by collectively buying from community artisans, creating cooperatives for producers to sell collectively, providing marketing, export channels, investment and revitalising designs to make it more fashionable for modern buyers and the international market. There still remains however a great deal of untapped skills that goes wasted as villagers lack access to profitable tourist markets and means of capital to operate effectively.

Poverty Contrast

Agriculture makes up a proportionately high amount of livelihoods in Cambodia with about 70 – 90% of people in rural areas of Siem Reap relying on it. The high turnover of raw food requirements for hotels, street vendors and restaurants make much of the Angkor Park farmers’ output a potential source of these raw ingredients. Unfortunately, most of the farmers are quite fragmented which makes it hard to supply in coordinated bulk amounts that are steadily available to businesses in Siem Reap.

In a research conducted in 2012, roughly $400 million USD of Cambodia’s $2 billion tourism income was flowing out of Cambodia for agricultural imports as even a lot of common domestically produced types of fruit sold by street vendors are imported from Thailand and Vietnam. [iv]The study found “local farmers (in Siem Reap) supply small quantities of food to this sector (hotels), but government officials and traders indicated that vegetables and meat consumed in hotels are mainly imported and hotels do not tend to promote Khmer dishes.” Livestock raised by locals were mostly on a subsistence level and thus not enough to supply to hotels, and the more than 20 varieties of herbs and vegetables cultivated are hardly in demand by hotels and restaurants catering to foreigners. Thus one of the most significant impediments is the ability to be able to supply the desired raw produce that are in demand to hotels and restaurants such as shrimp, lobsters and meats such as beef and specific vegetables that are consumed by tourists. The farmers simply don’t have these types of farms cultivating these items and lack the infrastructure to supply.

Additionally, inadequate communicative linkages between these farmers and hotels and restaurant chains make it hard for the local farmers to understand what is wanted and therefore not wanting to take the risk in borrowing from microfinance to get capital for expanding their agriculture, farmers end up selling to intermediaries at low costs. What is possible is for more initiatives to be created to encourage farmers to organise themselves to supply specific vegetables. This would then be needed to be implemented at a policy level to promote the linkages between these two sectors and essentially grow a niche where authentic Cambodian cuisine is promoted for tourists giving local farmers a competitive advantage. However, only a few tourist establishments and NGO’s have supported poor rural people with capacity building, small-community based projects and purchasing of local agriculture in addition to the promotion of responsible tourism.[v]Recently there has however been momentum as Cambodian Chefs Association have started creating meetings bringing together the chefs and the farmers from a rural commune in Siem Reap so that they can introduce chemical free locally grown produce and promote local development and are indicating that demand is exceeding supply available already. [vi]

NGO Role

A lot has been done by NGOs to promote responsible tourism related to child safe campaigns to curb underage sex work and campaigns to address the use of children as objects of tourists’ sightseeing made famous by Friends International’s thought-provoking “children are not tourist attractions” slogan. Friends International has had a strong presence in the country in enabling pro-community tourism for the past decade and half and have started up various successful social enterprises such as a restaurant chain called Friends that trains local underprivileged youth in service. Their popular child safe campaign was a reaction to the alarming trend occurring in Cambodia and that of “orphanage tourism” where many orphanages springing up were just exploitative businesses posing as orphanages to gain money or where parents were encouraged to give their children up for tourist dollars.

[From children are not tourist attractions: Friends International’s Childsafe picture makes tourists think twice about the way they interact with children]

My Impressions

One of the seven Child Safe tips mentioned are not to give to begging children as it promotes children into begging which can have detrimental effects on the future of Cambodian children. This one is extremely hard to do as it is heart-tugging to refuse a begging child and it is something you see often. I remember on one instance in a province called Kampong Cham I was shocked to see a little girl not more than 8 or 9 years old who was carrying a motionless baby asking tourists on the riverside for money only to find out later after we reported it that the actual mother was giving the baby a sleeping pill and sending the older daughter with the baby to attract sympathy dollars. Instances like these are not rare and as a responsible tourist the long-term effects of your actions must be considered.

Whilst I was in Cambodia I spent time working at an NGO and we had interviewed families about their family situation. On this one occasion, there was a mother with 2 very infant children who had extremely protruding bellies which was a significant indicator of malnutrition. On asked about this the mother putting on her bravest face said that she had just fed them milk and their bellies get like this after feeding. Whether she genuinely convinced herself that or not, I could not say. However, she had admitted to sending some of her older children to go begging by the riverside at night as that is often their income. This was one of the worst cases I saw and I sympathised with her deeply and couldn’t blame her at all – I couldn’t imagine what I’d do in such a situation. On principle I have never given to a child and have specifically only given to adults, but if considering to give something it would be better to give some food rather than give money.

Tourism has long been promoted as a vehicle for economic development and enabler out of poverty. Many locals of Siem Reap, especially the Angkor Park inhabitants have however been given little to prove them of this. Encouragingly, many more organisations in Siem Reap within the last few years are providing greater support and local development efforts are taking steps to integrate local community skills for pro-community sustainable tourism. However, these efforts are not possible without recognising the crucial link we as tourists play. By choosing to travel more responsibly, it does not have to limit our experience, but more so the opposite – it can make it more meaningful and enriching. Be different, interact, learn and feel inspired!

Sanura Gunatilake (BA Psychology, MA Social Research and Evaluation – NSW) is a social research and advocacy professional working in Australia and Southeast Asia. He can be contacted at:sanura@complexability.com.au