I had just finished my workout in Pierre’s gym and decided to grab a bite to eat afterward in the little restaurant next door. It is owned by a Cambodian family and when I went in there, a few of the kids were sitting around watching TV. As I waited for my order, I realized that so far, in my travels through this country, I had pretty much put all of my tourist money into foreign hands. On my first night I had gone to an Australian bar and had dinner, then gone to the beach and spent more in a foreign-owned bar. I had spent one night in a Cambodian guesthouse, but due to the problems with that place as I have previously recalled, I moved to the foreign-owned dormitory called Utopia. Now granted, that place was free, but then where did I eat breakfast and sit around sipping cocktails of an evening?
If Cambodia is going to get off it’s feet, it needs the local businesses to be strong. It needs it’s local people to reap the rewards of the large crowd of tourists who come here. As it is, these tourists spend a large portion of their money giving it back to the expats who live and run their businesses here. We, as tourists, are guests in this country, enjoying the natural environs, the beautiful beaches and the hospitality of the locals. It may be argued that foreign businesses provide jobs to locals, which they do indeed. However, those are jobs that would be there anyway, due to the number of tourists who come here.
Anyway, I realized that I should be spending my money in locally owned places, to help them out. So I moved to a new guesthouse, started dining in local restaurants and more importantly, started to be nicer to those motorbike taxis. Last night, when I ate in a restaurant owned and run by a Cambodian lady and her two daughters, the food tasted better somehow, knowing that the money was helping their family. It sounds really Miss-Universe-Pageantish, but it’s been a definite change of perspective for me.
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