Originally Posted by
ceejay
To quote George Orwell, comparing Pattaya with Siem Reap is like comparing a sausage with a rose. I was in Siem Reap last year for a week, and you just wouldn't go there for the boy bar scene, because apart from The Linga Bar, it just hasn't got one. To compare the two places I would say that the main reason for going to Pattaya is the bar scene, with a few day trips on the side. The main reason for going to Siem Reap is the temples, with an evening visit to Linga for a a little fun on the side.
I did take a couple of freelancers from Linga back to the hotel, and they were both sweet boys. I got the impression that both were genuinely gay (not always the case in Pattaya). Contrary to thaiguest, I did not find them at all greedy or grasping.
Cambodians do, on average, speak much better English than Thais (at least the ones I have met do). I noticed several language schools on the coach trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in places that were well away from the cities. Cambodians seem to set high store on learning foreign languages. Perhaps a reaction to the years of the Pol Pot regime, when knowing a foreign language was enough to get you, and you family, killed as bourgeois enemies of the people.
As far as the attitudes of Thais and Cambodians to each other go, I would describe what I have seen as toxic. Thais general attitude to Cambodians could be summed up as one of patronising contempt. The Cambodians not unnaturally, resent this and their attitude to Thailand in general is one of mistrust, coloured by a sense of a long held historical grieveance. For example, I was shown a carving in Angkor Wat which, I was told, showed Thais employed as labourers and artisans for the contruction of the temple. The inscription had been vandalised, and my (middle class and educated) guide was convinced that this had been done by Thai agents, to hide their subordinate role in building the temple. I came away with a much better understanding of the Preah Vihear dispute, and the riots that followed on from a Thai actress claiming the Thais had built Angkor Wat.