Tuk tuk: friend or foe?

Before the age of 18, everyday transportation meant a personal car; after the age of 18, transportation meant my own two feet or a subway.  In Cambodia, I get around primarily on a moto dop (motorbike taxi) or a tuk-tuk (a passenger carriage attached to a motorbike, pictured below).  If you want to take a look at how these forms of transport look on the road together, take a look at this post from last year.

A little background:  There are no set prices or meters for moto dop or tuk-tuk fares, so bargaining is a part of everyday life here.   Tuk-tuks cost approximately double a moto dop, though, and are more "touristy" by nature.  As a helpless passenger, your experience on either of these forms of transport depends largely on the personality and kindness of your driver, especially if you are a foreigner.  Though locals use tuk-tuks for large numbers of people or to carry things, they are largely tourist transportation.  Tourists are the main source of income for tuk-tuk drivers, who have been known to charge $10 to a foreigner for a trip that would cost a local $1 and a foreigner who knows better $1.50.  For a positive, interesting description of the new trend in making your tuk-tuk look unique ("pimping out" your tuk-tuk), visit this blog.  The carriage is typically red, but I've seen a baby pink one, a camouflage one, and several with colorful lights or music inside. 

This leads me to the point of this post - tuk-tuks: friend or foe?  Tuk-tuk drivers wait outside of areas they know tourists will be, like Western hotels, restaurants, and bars.  When I leave my house every morning, a herd of tuk-tuk drivers shout, snap, clap and wave to get my attention.  They call out, "Lady, you want tuk-tuk?"  "Tuk-tuk, OK?"  Some become particularly aggressive.  Once I saw a tuk-tuk driver call out to a heavyset woman as she left her hotel, "Tuk-tuk, OK?"  She politely declined with a smile.  He persisted:  "Where you go?"  "I like to walk," she said, still pleasantly.  He looked at her, following her as she walked up the street, then said, "Yeah, you need to walk."  The smile left her face.  I've heard stories of tuk-tuk drivers who confused patronage as true love and others who become physical when they feel that the fare wasn't sufficient.  Now, this is not to say that all tuk-tuk drivers are rude young men like these.  Some are honestly trying to make an income for their family, and never having personally felt the pressure of poverty, I can't criticize someone's attempts to feed his family (tuk-tuk drivers are always male).  If being aggressive means dinner for the night and not being aggressive means leaving your family hungry, I think we would all make the same choice.

I'm not proud of it, but somehow, I tend to not be as nice to tuk-tuk drivers as I should be.  Perhaps it's the language barrier, perhaps it's the frustration at the inherent tension between foreigner and local, but somehow when last night's tuk-tuk driver asked for more money, I just rolled my eyes and walked away, mumbling something about him being "ridiculous."  Would I ever do this with a US taxi driver?  Here, I've gotten out of tuk-tuks because I didn't like the way the driver was acting (docking his pay) and I've yelled out commands in snobby tones.  I'm not exactly Meryl Streep's character from the Devil Wears Prada, but certainly there is room for me to a bit more compassionate.    Plus, there's no other option...