The Salesmen of Angkor Wat

We've encountered many creative and persistent vendors in our travels, but none nearly so tenacious as the 10-year-old kids selling postcards (and other things) around the ruins.

Here, for example, is the conversation I had with a 10-year-old boy as I sat and sipped my coffee at a small stand:

boy: Hey Mister! You buy my postcard?

me: No thanks.

boy: Where you from?

me: The US. California.

boy: Sacramento!

me [a little surprised]: yea!

boy: Obama town!

me: er...sort of. I think he's actually from Chicago.

boy: You want to buy my postcard now?

me: No thanks. I don't really need one.

boy: Yea, you need 10!

me: er...thanks, I really don't buy things, though. I don't need anything.

boy [without pause, pointing]: You need that coffee.

me: oh yea, um, that's true. Maybe you should sell coffee, then next time I'll buy from you.

boy: You buy from me this time.

I had to give him points for creativity, until I had an eerily similar conversation with a little girl at a different temple site. She also knew the capital of California, and also informed me, after I told her "I don't need one", that I needed 2. Someone has been training these kids.

I actually watched two kids chase after a German tourist, running the other direction, yelling "ONE DOLLAR! ONE DOLLAR! YOU BUY!"

To give you an idea of the kind of markup, we stopped in an admittedly touristy looking restaurant on our way out of one of the sites. We looked at the posted prices, $5-6 per dish, and immediately turned around. The waitress rushed over and covertly told us she could give us a discount. I said I would really only consider it if we could eat for $2 or less. She immediately, without pause, accepted, because it was still a decent profit.

All that said, we managed to escape a lot of the aggressive commerce by riding our bicycles to alternative entrances. All the sites have 4 entrances, with only 1 or 2 used as tourist entrances. We usually just went to the other ones.