Backpacking Honeymooners?

Why not? When The One Hotel opened we put up a sign outside that just our logo, the symbol for "One" in Khmer. No mention of hotel so if you were walking by, you would never know. I just did not see the need to advertise a one room hotel with a sign, better to make it exclusive to those that know about it. When we opened Hotel Be, however, we put a a beautiful sign that shows our logo:


Now we have so many people walking by that see our sign, look at our beautiful lobby sandwiched between AHA Restaurant and McDermott Gallery and come into ask about the hotel. As a result, we have been able to get last minute or walk-in bookings for Hotel Be. This past Saturday I was in the lobby and a couple comes in with their big backpacks. They asked about our rooms and I told them the price for deluxe was $95 which was a little too high for them. They are from Berlin, on a five week honeymoon trip so they are on a budget. They wanted to see the room and I told them when they got back I would make them a better deal. They loved the room and I was able to offer them a discount they could afford so everything was perfect. Except I forgot the deluxe room was booked for the next night and they want to stay three nights. What to do? The only thing I could do was to upgrade our honeymoon couple to a suite. Naturally they were surprised and delighted and they have been enjoying the last couple of days relaxing and spending time at Linga Bar having a drink, reading a book and talking to the local book sellers that wander by. Not only was it nice to have them stay with us, that means both hotels sold out for two nights. The honeymooners may stay one more night so that would be three nights sold out. Great!

Gay or not Gay?

About six months ago we had a very nice couple stay with us. They enjoyed their stay and it was a pleasure to have them as our guest. A few weeks after they left I was pleased to see they had written such a nice review of us on Trip Advisor. But, I was a bit puzzled by the last line of their review: "Just a comment: if you are not comfortable around Gay men, you should probably look elsewhere." There is no hiding that fact that I am gay, and no reason to hide it. But, I wonder who where the other gay men they were talking about? True, we had a gay couple in another hotel room and for sure there are going to be some gay people at Linga Bar, but they are customers just like all of our guests. I did not respond to this at the time because it is true, if you don't like gay people then you may not be our kind of guest. Recently we had another guest make a similar comment: Loved the hotel but noted about the gay people. So, now I was left to wonder, did these two different guests mistakenly think the staff are gay? That happens often at Linga Bar. The customers assume these cute, friendly Cambodian guys working at a gay owned bar must be gay. Well, that is why I am writing this blog entry to set this issue "straight."

I currently have 20 staff working for me in the bar, hotels and spa. Out of this number there is only one staff member that would be identified as gay. All of the rest are straight, and believe me I know because I know who they are dating, who they are married to or who they are interested in. If I could only get them as excited about getting cute guys in the bar as they are in looking for cute girls, we would be much more successful. Once again, it appears that my all-male staff are guilty of being gay by association to me and the bar. The main reason I feel this happens is that Cambodian men are very sweet, gentle and very kind. Many of our hotel guests are overwhelmed by how wonderfully friendly they are. But, Cambodian men just don't show a Western macho side, it is just not there nature. And when it comes to gay acceptance, they are refreshingly unencumbered by homophobia, macho hang ups or what other people perceive. It may be difficult for Westerns to understand this, but Cambodians generally grow up in very close quarters, and closely linked with their surrounding community. And without any stigma (i.e. Catholic guilt) issues, they are happily who they are. I have had to correct many customers, on many occasions, who assumed the staff were gay. They found it hard to believe these sweet guys were straight but after four years I know.

One story I like to tell to point out just how differently masculinity is viewed here is that one night a long time ago I went with my staff to a local dance club. I really do not care for the place as the music is lousy but I went to be with the staff. The style of this place is that they will play some upbeat dance music and then switch to some slow dance songs. When they switched to the slow songs, couples came out to dance together. So, I am watching this scene when I see two of my male staff slow dancing together! I know for a fact they are both straight so why would they be dancing together like this? Well, the answer is easy, there are not many girls they could ask to dance with since the guys out number the girls. So, what should they do, not enjoy a slow dance or enjoy it together? I can not imagine this same scene playing out in a club in the US. Straight guys in the US are just not very likely to slow dance with each other. Here, it is no big deal as they know it does not make any difference to their sexual preference if they dance with another guy. It is this attitude that is so refreshing. That is why our gay customers feel so at ease here because they are welcomed completely.

So, am I running a Gay hotel? Not at all. We have not done any marketing towards gay guests, ZERO. Why? It is not necessary. We are here to run a beautiful, unique hotel experience and we welcome all guests regardless. So, naturally, most of our guests are straight and with no gay marketing about 25% of our guests are gay. But more importantly, as I have said before, we have the nicest guests. And the fact that we have had two guests over the last six months mention about gay people is beside the point, since they enjoyed their stays. I will say these guests skewed into the older age bracket for our guests. Our guests tend to be in early 30's to mid 40's age range. When we have had older guests, I am always sensitive to making sure they are comfortable and happy. One lovely couple that stayed with us sometime ago were a retired couple from Portland. I wondered if they would enjoy the vibrancy of our location. Sure enough, they told me the live in the downtown Portland area and routinely walk from their house to go shopping, eating etc. I was talking to the husband and he told me they just came from scuba diving in Phuket and when they get back they have scuba diving trips scheduled for Mexico and South America. I was worn out just listening to their schedule!

The final issue I wanted to address is Linga Spa. The last guest that mentioned about gay men also mentioned that she could not go to the hotel spa as it was "men only." Well, that is false on both accounts. First of all, it is not the hotel spa for either The One Hotel or Hotel Be. It is a separate business that is housed in the complex. Yes, our target market for Linga Spa is the gay market. Why? Because there are about 15-20 other spa/massage places within a couple of blocks of us and none of them cater to this market so we have it all to ourselves. It is a small spa and not big enough to market to all types of customers. That said, we do use it to accommodate our hotel guests when needed. We have used the largest of our three rooms to do a "Couples Massage" for guests from The One Hotel. And, we had three ladies from Singapore staying in a room at Hotel Be that we were able to accommodate at Linga Spa.

So, are we all clear now? I hope so. Everyone is welcome here, always. But probably the only gay guy you will meet here, except for some Linga Bar customers, is me. Come and see for yourself!

Cambodian Traffic Laws

Now that it has been a year since we lost Manit in a motorbike accident, I thought I would write about driving here as a way of explaining what goes on. I guess, technically speaking, there are Cambodian traffic laws but you would never know. Every rule in the book is broken in every way. Example: Imagine driving down a one way street and have oncoming traffic on both sides of you. Driving a car, you are supposed to have a driving license and there are driving schools for that. But, since the vast majority of the traffic is from motorbikes, that does not count for much. So, everyone on a motorbike (no age limits enforced) drives however they want or know how to. And you can see everything on a motorbike. A family of five, three or four adults, a driver and two huge pigs upside down on the back. And everything possible in between. So imagine all of these motorbikes and no enforced traffic laws. Utter chaos. The only thing that makes it work in a small way is that most people do not typically drive fast and therefore can avoid accidents or they are minor.

There are about five traffic lights in town but there is not one stop sign. Think about that for a moment. No need to stop when going through an intersection, turning on to a road etc. I can, and have, gone from my house on one side of town all the way to the airport on the other side of town without having to stop once. There are some half-hearted attempts at traffic enforcement. Well, half-hearted is being very generous. Police will stop people for going the wrong way but it does nothing to change behavior. Cambodians do not like the fact they have to pay fines when they do this because they know the police pocket the money. When my staff complained about this I told them they should follow the rules and that would avoid paying a fine. And, it happens in other countries where traffic violations are enforced and it cost significantly more that the small fines they pay here.

I read recently that there was a more comphrehensive traffic code that was written and came into law in Cambodia. Laws banning driving under the influence, mandatory helmets on motorbikes etc. The irony was it was passed in the same month that Manit died and there has been little or no effort to enact the laws. One local Siem Reap official was quoted as saying something to the effect that by enacting the law it would create a hardship on the people. As if not allowing someone to drive drunk would mean they could not go out and have a good time and that would be a hardship. I would love to have the chance to tell this person that death is a far greater hardship than the inconvenience caused by not being able to drive while drunk. With that kind of mentality, when will anything ever change?

One thing you rarely see on a motorbike here are rear view mirrors. They are just not used. Even our staff moto had them but they ended up being taken off because they were not used. In Phnom Penh they tried to enforce having rear view mirrors on all motorbikes but it never took hold. If you go there today I don't think even the majority of motorbikes have them. I always thought it was an apt metaphor that in a country with such a dark period in the not so distant past that Cambodia has, that they would not want to be looking behind, only forward.