Cambodia--give me an angle, please!

In the long process of getting settled into Phnom Penh, I've had to allow myself to be ripped off 10-25% on most occasions when I need something--whether it's extension cords, kitchen utensils, bedding, etc. This is the "price" that "we" pay for being foreigners. After all, in a country where museum admissions are multiplied by 10 for foreigners, it's only fair to expect that regular marketers will expect a little premium.

That being said, I do put my foot down occasionally and I use a few dirty tricks here-and-there to avoid some of the heftiest costs. When I bought my air conditioner, I picked out the model at one shop, then sent a Khmer friend to a shop across the street to bargain for the same model. Not ideal for the first shop, but that's their loss for trying to rip me off on such a big purchase. When I bought my motorbike in the province, I bought from family of friends so they dropped the foreigner-premium.

I have an even dirtier trick that I use when I do, in fact, know the price. I will try to bargain down to the normal price in a civil way, but if they insist on the foreigner price, I just give them the wrong amount (in an obvious way) and walk away from the shop with my purchase. If I was truly ripping them off, they would chase me down, but at that point they usually realize that it's not worth the hassle and anyway they still cut quite a profit. This strategy works especially well with motorbike taxi drivers if you have the correct change; get on the bike and tell him to drive to your destination. When you arrive, don't bother to haggle on the price--just give him the normal pay and walk away. He might beg for a bit more as you walk away, but at that point he's doing it on want rather than need.

Now--on to my real point here: in all these games, I am just trying to get down to the normal Cambodian price--but are there any situations in which I can get a better price? Well, indeed there are and these are also situations in which Cambodians cannot easily do better. The secret is of course a long-standing family tradition--garage sailing and buy-swell-swap with other foreigners. The ticket is to exploit Westerners' sense of second-hand prices. In Cambodia, the second hand market is thriving and people expect that second, third, or even fourth hand cell phones still retain much of their original value. Westerners' generally see second hand things as a nuisance to get rid of, and view their value is having been halved or more. I've furnished my house mostly with second hand stuff from other foreigners--amazing my Khmer friends with the deals I've been getting and all of the freebies they've thrown in.

One day, as I showed up with a fresh load of nifty furniture, my landlord sourly muttered in Khmer, "oh my, he is filling up my house!" And therein lies the issue: Westeners are consumers, and they accumulate, which means that moving entails the burden of disposing of their things. Khmer people are minimalists, sometimes out of necessity but often for cultural reasons, and they value everything they have. A Khmer person selling off things from his house would never, as a nice American mother did to me recently, just throw in an extra fan or sculpture or potted plant "just because". Contrary to the belief of my landlord, I view my apartment is modestly furnished: a living/eating space with an armchair, couch, and bookshelf. A bedroom with a bamboo closet, a bed, a bookshelf and a desk.

That being said, my neighbors, who share an identically-sized apartment, manage to squeeze four tweens into the same space and have almost no furnishings. A bamboo cot in front of the TV, a computer desk between them all, a few mats to sleep on, and a bowl for doing laundry. Occasionally, they set up a mosquito net. No plants, no space to eat except the floor (quite normal for Khmers), and just one place to lounge between them. I find them napping on the tile floor in positions that would leave me a bruise on my hip for a month. But then again, they effectively spend $30 per month each on rent and they probably spent $100 to furnish it, as opposed to $600.

Perhaps rather incongruously, they each own motorbikes valued at around $1500 and cell phones valued at around $200-300. But in the end, very few people will see their apartment and everyone around them will see their motorbike and phone.

In the end, I'm showing off to no one and they are showing off to everyone. But with white skin, I don't need to show my wealth outwardly or differentiate myself--a situation Khmers do very much have to deal with. Still, I get my daily dose/reminder of white privilege every time I walk by their door on my way downstairs.