🤫 I Lied A Little For A Free VIP Tour At A Nearby Resort 🏨
A nearby mega resort recently opened, and even though we can't afford a night there, I managed to get my wife and I a VIP tour of the property.
Am I Unethical? 🤷♂️
I have passed this resort property so many times while taking my kids to school, and recently they place a signboard on the highway, so I knew they were officially open for business. On this day my wife and I were passing by on the moto when I pulled in without warning. My wife was a bit nervous because it's clearly a VIP type place and very exclusive.
While passing by the unmanned security checkpoint, we had to leave the narrow private road for a Range Rover full of VIPs to pass by. Even I wondered if I was in over my head, but I pointed out trusty Honda Super Cub 90 straight ahead and told my wife to play along and follow my lead.
I should mention that because I was driving the moto and doing most of the sweet-talking, I don't have many pics of this adventure. If you want to see better pics of the resort, you should check my wife's post because she had free hands and was more of the observer on this trip than myself.
After making our way deep into the property, we could see the place was still very much under construction. I noticed a guy welding and I pulled over to spark a conversation and put my plan into action. After a bit of chit-chat, I showed interest in renting one of the bungalows, and within a few minutes the manager manifested himself on a motorbike.
The Lie Begins 😜
Speaking the Khmer language fluently as a foreigner definitely opens a lot of doors here that I wouldn't normally be granted access to as a non-Cambodian. When the manager showed up, I began by explaining that we live on top of the mountain pass, our place is not very nice, it's super windy, and my parents from the USA are coming to visit soon and will need a place much nice than ours to feel comfortable and safe.
It was at this point my wife's eyes lit up as she realized how I was going to pull this off. Just this little notion caused the manager to want to show us all the various bungalows, from the 2-bedroom $150 USD a night bungalows down to some slightly simpler 1-bedroom units. The property must be at least 200 acres, and it took at least 30 minutes to follow the bossman around and document the bungalows for my "parents."
Not Our Cup Of Tea 🍵
On any given month, our net family income would only afford us three nights at a place like this, but the experience of getting the tour gave me a feel for this business and the clientele they attract. I asked if they had much foreign guests, and the manager told me it's been exclusively Chinese folks that are in the area for the casino on the border. It's not the same type of people that would be interested in our much wilder and primitive location, but it was really nice to find out that these pre-fab mini bungalows can be rented for as much as $150 a night.
My wife and I have been researching various container and pre-fab mini bungalows online, and most of them are between $1,500 and $3,500 USD, so that means this place is earning their investment back in 30 nights of rent. Realistically though, another thousand or so dollars was probably spent to finish the interiors with a bed frame, mattress, linens, etc., but this is still an incredibly quick turn around time on investment.
My Parents Are Never Coming 🤦♂️
I must admit I want my lie to be true, in the 12+ years I've lived on and off in Cambodia, I've never had a visitor from outside the country that came exclusively to visit me, neither friends nor family members. If it was going to happen, it would've already happened years ago. At this point in life I realize that we will never get a US Visa and that nobody from my stupid little farm town is ever coming to Cambodia.
Everyone back in southern Indiana has many incorrect stereotypes burned into their brains, especially that Cambodia is a third world country. Well, there isn't one Range Rover owner in my hillbilly town, and there certainly isn't a motel in town that costs more than $70 a night, so if it's about money and wealth, there is certainly more wealth here and the property values are also three times higher than where I'm from, so it looks like Indiana is actually the third world country.
After all, the most common form of accommodation where I'm from is a trailer park, and these places provide a sadder existence for the working poor that I have ever seen in this country, where even most working poor actually own property and a home, albeit small. So who knows, perhaps in the end my parents will see the pics of this fancy resort and actually want to come visit. As for me, I don't feel bad about lying to get a quick VIP tour, the manager earns a salary, and he seemed happy to have a break from his normal work routine. The way I see it, everybody won on this day.
I will not mention the name of this business in my post because it will likely be indexed to the first page of google results, and because it's a new establishment there aren't much search results. I have provided a Pinmapple location though just in case anyone may want to visit the place some day.
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The resort is really splendid although you lie but you got complete visit of the resort
Haha, yes, guilty as charged, but nobody was hurt and I got some free market research.
Lol, I would have turned you away at the gate 😂😂 Joking. There's worse things to lie about. 😂
I don't feel bad at all, hope that doesn't mean I am a sociopath in development. Well, I justify it by wanting to see a variety of prefab shippable homes in the wild, look at build quality, and gauge nightly rental prices against the purchasing cost of these things. I ultimately didn't like the styles there, but there are some shippable A-frame cabins that are $2,000+ USD that I am still keeping my eyes open for.
We actually saw a few of them on the opposite riverbank, but it's a different resort, so that will require more lies and a different trip.
Yay! 🤗
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Hehehe I remember my friend who used to be like that to have a tour around the resort or a place he will pretend or Lie to the crew. And so the tour has begun. So we take pictures and pose. After that, we went out.
Okay, haha, I feel much better now. I guess this is a good opportunity to teach my daughters about harmless lies and bad lies 😁.
Hehe yap... as long as we dont harm anyone. white lies will do.
Maybe someone reading this on Hive may want to visit Cambodia and is ok with paying $150 a night (is that USD? it's really expensive!!!!) so you could have done them a favour. You never know.
The mainland Chinese that come here are very okay with it, they even gladly pay $300 US per month for basic rooms that are normally never more than $50 a month here. These mega resorts are located near the border casino, so they are almost exclusively to service VIP Cambodian gamblers and gambling Chinese tourists. The style and and layout of these places wouldn't entice typical visitors to Cambodia who would be more interested in eco-tourism, wildlife, and perhaps visiting our place 😉.
But because the place is very big, it is almost surely owned by a powerful friend of the PM, and there are strict libel laws here, and it's basically illegal to say anything bad about a business, so my little story here could potentially be illegal, so that's why I didn't mention JT Srnt Bnaos. That's as close as I'll dare get to typing the name of this place.
I think you mistaken, the price for one night is $ 120 with 2 bedrooms. But it’s still expensive for this price. But the rich people it’s ok.
I thought the guy said $150, either way both prices are unlikely to deter anyone with that much money to spend for just one night.
What aa beautiful place but to expensive. Well, your lies always work with other people and sometimes with us.
My lies always work well with you, speaking of which, did you know I was once an astronaut?
Nice try or maybe you were in your dreams.
We do have a very skewed vision of the world, here. In school we're taught local history and the foundations of democracy, tracing it from the ancient Greek cultures, through the Roman, to now. There is very little opportunity for children to learn much outside of that which tends to frame their world viewpoint as adults.
There is a belief in western manifest destiny, but little do people realise that Alexander the Great was one axe-swing away from being killed in his first campaign. If that had happened, all of Greek, then Roman, then "Western", civilisation would have been very different.
Ending my rant now. I'm glad your lie worked! I suspect that getting the info you did is going to help you price your own place.
"Manifest Destiny," you just gave me some public school flashbacks 😉. I wonder if they're still teaching this concept in public school curriculum?
You're right about the resort info, I mostly just wanted a short fun distraction before the long roadtrip back up the mountain, but it accidentally turned into some market research and prefab home scouting.
I see this resort is very luxurious and very beautiful to see and very comfortable to spend the night here.thank you for sharing
It is very luxurious indeed, although not quite my style. I do think if my parents ever did come to visit though, they'd feel more comfortable there than at our house. But I guess if they were gonna visit, it would've already happened in the last 12 years.
Just as I told @sreypov , I believe your "lie" is not only perfectly justified, but in a way necessary market research. After all, you seriously do intend renting out tourist accommodation, right? So you need to be aware with what else is available in your area. In fact, had you told the manager this, it should have been in the interest of his business to get to know you as the competition. (Though the huge difference in the target population would make it hard to call it real competition. In any case, there's still time for that later.)
Most people that I know (who tend to be a lot like the people I assume you know) would probably run from that huge resort, catered for Chinese gamblers, even if it had the most reasonable prices. Instead, your tourist cabin looks a lot more favorable, since it is a family business, and since you share their passion for nature, hiking, swimming, kayaking, etc. so you will be able to provide much better information on the area than the resort manager. Ultimately it's not all about the price.
I am glad not one Hiver has shamed me, I feel much better. I didn't intend it as market research, but once we were inside I quickly realized I should make the adventure much more than a free half hour of fun. Prefab shippable homes are the trend here, so it was nice to see build quality in person. It definitely isn't my style, 250 acres of clearcut pristine forest turned into paved roads and monoculture grassfields.
If were were any closer to the border casino, we'd have no choice but to cater to similar guests, but I give thanks for being high on the mountain where hardcore gamblers rarely stop for anything more than a urination stop.