Scrolling through my phone just now, I had one of those encounters again—some guy suddenly messaging me for money, claiming he was starving and begging for cash to buy a meal. When I didn't reply right away, he actually had the nerve to hit me with a video call to chase it up. He played the pitiful card hard, swearing up and down he just wanted a square meal. Since I'm in the F&B business here and know a few owners who can sort out simple meals no problem, I casually told him I could hook him up with something in Sihanoukville.
Who would've thought? The second the words left my mouth, his tune changed instantly, stammering that he was actually still back in China. When I heard that, I almost laughed out loud—talk about being totally speechless. With the roaring moto exhaust and blazing sun we deal with every day out here, if you're genuinely starving on the street, you can at least count on a bit of local kindness. But if the guy's sitting back in China, there is even less reason to waste any sympathy on him.
Life back home is pretty decent these days, and the system definitely won't let anyone go hungry, especially after completely wiping out extreme poverty a while back. There is zero need to run all the way across the internet to pull off a sob story here. Making a living out here is tough enough without dealing with people trying to scam your goodwill. Let me just advise these familiar faces online to stop wasting effort trying to build a rapport with me—save that acting for something else.
