As the neon lights of the Yolo club flash brightly and the chest-pulsing beats of Rihanna blare from Temple Bar, a young man is on his knees in the road, chugging beer poured through a funnel. As the liquid gets too much he chokes, spraying warm beer over the road, known as Pub Street. The passing tourists and five busking landmine survivors playing traditional Cambodian music nearby barely look up.
“When the foreigners come to Siem Reap and wear these clothes and act like this, it is looking down on the culture of Cambodia,” said Keov Leakna, who wrung her hands as she sat on the steps of the spa she has run for 11 years. “I find it very difficult to see every day.”
It was not just occasional drunken antics she despaired of but a “disrespectful” partying culture that has taken over some quarters of Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat, the most sacred site in Cambodia, but last week 10 tourists — five Britons, a Dutch citizen, two Canadians, a New Zealander and a Norwegian — found themselves the target of a crackdown on the pub crawls and booze-fueled pool parties.
A raid on a weekly pool party, called Let’s Get Wet, on Thursday last week saw the arrests of Dan Jones, 30, Paul Harris, 32, Vince Hook, 35, Thomas Jeffries, 22, and Billy Stevens, 21, alongside five others, all accused of taking sexually explicit photos and publishing them online. For police and prosecutors this equated to a charge of “making pornography.”
Cambodian police have said they witnessed pictures being taken of half-naked women at the Let’s Get Wet party, but Duong Thavry, head of the anti-human-trafficking and juvenile protection department in Siem Reap, told reporters these 10 had been arrested because they had put “pornographic” pictures from previous parties on Facebook to advertise the event.
“These photos and videos are against our culture. They were publicly putting them up on the Internet, and making it look like Cambodia has these kinds of parties here. It is very disrespectful and gives the wrong idea of our country,” she said.
Duong said the police had warrants for the 10 before the event and had come looking specifically for them, despite suggestions by some of those arrested that it was a case of mistaken identity in the chaos of the raid. Several of those in jail have stressed that the “pornographic” images released by Cambodian police, of tourists playing “sex twister,” were not from Let’s Get Wet but a separate pub crawl a few years ago.
Some tourists feel the response has been excessive — and possibly self-defeating. Sitting on the terrace outside the Blue Pumpkin, Georgie Eccles from New Zealand said: “People come here because of Angkor Wat, but also because it’s a fun place to go out and meet people and the bars are good. If they shut all that down or made it scary to go out, I think they would get way less visitors.”
Many businesses and travel agencies in the town echoed that fear. Siem Reap depends on the tourists who visit in the few months of high season and it has already been a quiet year, with hotels slashing prices by up to 80 percent.
For many living in the town however, the arrests signaled a much-needed clampdown. Sophoan Dam, a language teacher who grew up in a rural village near Angkor Wat, expressed a distaste for the pub crawls and parties, which she said promoted “behavior that is disrespectful to our culture.”
“When tourists come here, of course we understand they want to relax, they want to enjoy their time, but to walk down the street in just a bikini or without a shirt is very offensive to Cambodian people,” Dam said. “The pub crawl people had a warning that what they were doing was unacceptable in our country, but they went ahead with it anyway — that’s really disrespectful.”
A close friend of Harris, who was in touch with him in the police station, said many in the group had initially not taken the arrest seriously, telling the police they had “no proof,” but the gravity of their situation had sunk in after their court case on Sunday last week. Speaking at a preliminary trial, the group’s lawyer Soung Sophea said his clients were not criminals, but had simply failed to understand Cambodian culture.
The arrests of the 10 did not come out of the blue. Jones had been warned not to host Let’s Get Wet after the organizers of another event, Siem Reap Pub Crawl, were arrested two weeks previously, when police sent an officer undercover who witnessed games such as “sex twister.” They were released but given a fine and a caution and made to sign a piece of paper saying they would leave the country. Two of them did not, and chose instead to work for Jones at Let’s Get Wet.
The authorities were also said to have been enraged that the Let’s Get Wet party had been held in a private villa, even though organizers had been told to cancel and had not paid police the usual sum — described by many as a bribe — for an event license. Those now in jail have been fined about US$2,500 each by the police even before being charged.
A groveling apology video from outside the court on Sunday last week shows Jones bowing, as he says he “respects Cambodian culture” and has been working to “help Cambodian children and Cambodian families.”
Sovuth Kim, a tuk-tuk driver, did not find the image of contrition convincing. “Everyone has a different culture, but when the foreigners and the expats come here they should respect ours. What the foreigners are doing here, it sets a bad example, and is very damaging to Khmer culture.”
The majority of the millions who pass through Siem Reap are not hedonists, but while the pub crawls have now been canceled, the boozy backpacker culture is still glaringly visible and getting drunk is cheap here, even for cash-strapped backpackers: a pint (473ml) of beer is US$0.50, a margarita US$2.
In Mad Monkey hostel, a sign advertises a “Booze Cruise”: US$25 for unlimited alcohol on a boat that visits one of Siem Reap’s traditional floating villages, still occupied by Cambodian families. An early afternoon visit to Funky Flashpacker Asia hostel — a former host of Let’s Get Wet — sees a pool party in full flow, music blaring (“shake that ass for me” booms from the speakers) while travelers in bikinis and shorts knock back beer, cocktails and “pink pussy” and “blow job” shooters. The managers of both hostels declined to speak to the Guardian.
Siem Reap Governor So Platong said that unless more damning evidence was found, the group were likely to be deported. He planned to invite managers and owners of all the bars, clubs, hostels and hotels in the town to a seminar about the laws and customs of Cambodia. If any continued to flout the rules, he said, they would be shut down immediately.
“We need to protect the image of Siem Reap,” So said. “Whatever happens here, it gets picked up by the international press and it risks destroying the reputation of Cambodia.”
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