The economies of tourism are complicated, massively complicated, in underdeveloped countries, even more so. As a tourist it is impossible to know the true cost of something. Being six feet tall and having white skin somehow sets me apart from the locals. It’s strange.
As a result of my unusual pallor and height, magical things happen to the price of anything I want to buy, hire, or rent. A few days ago I had an enlightening conversation with a tuk-tuk driver, and another one with a stall operator.
While I was eating my breakfast at a little café next to my hostel a Cambodian man came down and sat next to me, unexpected but not unusual. Naturally, we started talking about this and that, and I eventually asked him what he did. “Tuk-tuk driver”, and my heart fell. I knew he was about to try and sell me some package or convince me to go somewhere.
As luck would have it, I was wrong. He didn’t want to sell me anything. Instead we started talking about tuk-tuks and tourism in general. He had worked at guesthouses and restaurants in addition to driving a tuk-tuk. Someday he wants to open a guesthouse of his own.
As I go into more specific details, please forgive me as I’ve undoubtedly made more than a few mistakes and made rough guests at actual numbers.
He explained that there are, in essence, three different kinds of tuk-tuks. First, are the hotel tuk-tuks. They wait outside guesthouses and hostels and generally snag the customers as they leave in the morning. They must have nice, well maintained tuk-tuks, and the drivers must know someone who works in the hostel.
The second kind of tuk-tuk driver waits outside the bus stops and gives rides to tourists arriving in a new city, often suggesting a hostel if they tourist doesn’t have a specific location yet. Now, these drivers have to pay the bus company a fee, $25.00 a month, or $2.00 a day. Yet, I’ve never paid more than… $1.00 or maybe $1.50 to get to my hotel (sometimes even less). How could this be?
First of all, if they take you to a hostel, the hostel is paying them a commission, usually a dollar to two. If they manage to take two or three people to a hostel in a given day, they’ve paid for their spot at the bus station and made a few bucks. They have (in the locals eyes) gained rights to you as a customer. And undoubtedly, they will attempt to sell you some package. Usually they’ll bargain to meet you at some time the next morning and they’ll drive you to two or three sites, for $5.00-15.00.
The third kind of tuk-tuk driver just sits on the side of the street, and flags down passing tourists. The other two hate this kind because they view them as thieves, stealing customers they’ve already laid rights to.
Now lets get a little more complicated. Assume your driver at the hostel or from the bus stop sells you a tour. Logically, they’ve paid for their expenses and made a tidy little profit too. Or maybe not… By way of anecdotal example, in Phnom Penh I split a tuk-tuk with three other guys for a total of $12.00, $3.00 each. We drove ~15km outside of the city and then back in. In Battambong for a total of $8.00 I drove 20km outside the city, another 15km to a second site, and then another 15km back into the city.
In Phnom Penh, the two places we visited were government run, and cost a flat $2.00 entrance fee. In Battambong, one of the places I visited cost $10.00 and was privately held. My tuk-tuk driver undoubtedly received a $2.00 or $3.00 commission for driving me there.
Now it has been explained to me that in many cases a tuk-tuk driver will actually agree to a package where the tourist pays them less than the actual cost in gas to drive there. The tuk-tuk drive makes a wager that they’ll make up the difference in commissions. Sometimes they’re right sometimes they’re wrong.
Onto the Bamboo train, the one I paid $10.00 to ride and my tuk-tuk driver was paid $2.00 or $3.00 in commission. After my ride I sat and chit-chatted with a woman who worked at the store. After she realized that I wasn’t going to buy anything we started talking about the train. As it turns out, her husband was one of the drivers.
Out of my $10.00 $2.00 or $3.00 went to the tuk-tuk driver. The bamboo train driver was paid another $1.00 and presumably the owner kept the rest (I think, for all I know he could have to pay other people). For each trip the train driver makes, he gets paid $1.00. Hardly seems fair, do it? The young woman urged my to tip my driver. I did.
Now the young woman told me another piece of information that, for me, helped explain everything. A worker out in the rice fields gets paid $2.00-$3.00 a day. It’s back breaking work in the sun for long hours. I would use it as a base for the minimum pay. If you can beat $2.00 to $3.00 dollars a day, you’re ahead of the system.
Back to breakfast, the gentleman told me a few more interesting little snippets of information about Cambodia. Fifteen years ago when he was going to school a bowl of noodle soup cost 300 reil (the exchange rate is currently 4000r to 1usd; I have no idea what it was in 1995). Today that same bowl of soup costs ~5000r. That’s an inflation of roughly 1600% over 15 years. Now, he could also use that same 300r to pay for an hour of English instruction with roughly 15 other students. His mother gave him 300r a day; he chose to go to school. His English, today, is excellent.
He also told me that when he opens his guesthouse (he said it was a very big dream, he makes just enough money to get by) he wants to open it in Battambong, not Siem Reap. Apparently the in fighting among the Cambodians in Siem Reap over tourists’ money can get nasty. Though he’d probably make less money in Battambong, he doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of Siem Reap.
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