Wow! 5 USD? That's not bad at all for a night and with Free wifi but the food needs to be improved then.
I must say that being fluent in other languages and tricking people when they are talking behind your back is a fun thing to do. 😂
I can only imagine the look on their faces when you talk back with their language. 😁😆
The $5 guesthouse and the place where got some takeaway food were two different locations. The guesthouse had no wifi, and barely a mattress, but at least it was a safe space for the night. I think in the bigger cities most people aren't impressed if you speak basic Khmer, but fluency is still impressive. In the countryside and places where there is little tourism, even saying "Hello, how are you?" gives you big points. 10% of people simply can't compute that I speak Khmer, and often I must have a Khmer person relay my words even though my pronunciation is very good.
Oh, I see but I'm glad it was a safe space for the night though. Speaking a little or fluency in another language can be an advantage.
Advantages are you can understand what they are saying.
Well here in Cebu we are impressed with tourists who can speak a little Bisaya I don't know with other cities.
Especially in the Philippines, because you have so many regional languages, I think it would be even harder for a traveler to learn phrases. I found this frustrating in India, I would learn a few phrases, travel 100km to the next town, and it was a whole new language.
With Khmer, it's the same language spoken all over the country, although some accents are hard for me and certain regions use strange vocabulary that is harder for me to follow. But for the most part Khmer is pretty standard, and there aren't really regional languages for the most part.
You'll be amazed we have 111 dialects here in the Philippines but everyone speaks Filipino or Tagalog so that's the thing we all have in common so if you go to a place that has a different dialect you can just speak tagalog if you know and they will respond in tagalog too. 😊