CAMBODIA: Despite rapid recent development, the divide between the haves and have-nots in Siem Reap is obscene, writes Rosita Boland
Siem Reap is a very small town with a very big nearby internationally famous tourist attraction: the Temples of Angkor, which extend across 40 sq km.
In January 2003, when I first visited, the streets in the centre of town had just been paved and a couple of erratically lit street lights had gone up. My coconut curry came served in a green coconut, right off the tree, and there were beggars and landmine victims camped outside the handful of simple restaurants.
Children swarmed at you outside every temple, pleading with you to buy postcards and trinkets.
My guest house room cost $6: the average monthly wage in Cambodia was, and still is, in the region of $30 a month.
The men of Siem Reap had been instructed by the authorities the previous year to leave their guns at home, as they were scaring the tourists: prior to this, they had ridden round town with AK47s strapped to their backs.
Despite this, Siem Reap felt safe to me, much more so than the country's capital, Phnom Penh, which felt volatile and where I felt distinctly uneasy walking around alone, day and night.
There were only a couple of western bars in Siem Reap at that point. They served the backpackers and the ex-pats: there are several NGOs present in Cambodia. After the end of the war and when Cambodia became a safer place, they started arriving in droves.
Even though Phnom Penh is the capital and the more obvious place for NGOs to be based, there are still many ex-pats in Siem Reap.
Many of those were working for conservation agencies, which help maintain the temples. Cambodia is too poor to preserve and upkeep its priceless heritage, so the temples are administered and maintained by a complex combination of foreign interest.
In 2002, Siem Reap had had 277,000 tourists. Last year, it had 1.05 million. Returning in February this year, I was astounded by the speed of the development in only two years. There was a large new airport and hotels lining the route from airport to town. Street lights were everywhere.
The beggars and landmine victims were nowhere to be seen, nor were the hundreds of children who had scampered through the temples, trying to sell their trinkets. My coconut curry came on a plate and cost five times as much. In much the same way as the men had been ordered to keep their guns out of sight, so too had the authorities ordered potentially upsetting and annoying people out of tourist eyesight.
Beggars had been cleared away and no children now sold souvenirs in the temples. Nobody could tell me where they had gone.
There were literally scores of new bars and restaurants. The guest house I had stayed in two years previously, the Ivy, had become one big bar. There was a new crowd of ex-pats in Siem Reap. Along with the NGOs and the conservation people and archeologists, there were entrepreneurs: people who had arrived to set up guesthouses, bars, restaurants, hotels. Labour is cheap, and with a little capital, you can live well for your investment in a country as poor as Cambodia.
Siem Reap is not typical of a small Cambodian town, but it is clear to see that the divide in it between those who have money and those who do not is obscenely huge.
And since so many of those who are perceived to have money are western, sadly, it's not much of a surprise that an international school was targeted.