“You went where and did what?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“But I thought that visiting an orphanage would be doing good work,” replied Andrew, my unsuspecting friend who was visiting from Australia. He had gone along to one of the many residential places suggested by the tuk-tuk driver and taken along a bag of rice. It was a good scam as the rice cost twice what it should so the driver would have earned a good kick-back.
Next to sex tourism and the garment industry, orphanages are the biggest business in Cambodia. The problem is that most tourists just don’t get it. They see the abject poverty and want to do something to help. Or at least throw some money at it to ease their occidental guilt.