Do you remember Angelina Jolie starrer “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”? The sequence where she escapes with an ancient artefact and jumps into a waterfall. It was filmed at Phnom Kulen in Cambodia. The location turned a travel hotspot among American and European tourists overnight. This is the actual movie scene (image credit: Amazon) I have traveled extensively to Cambodia and also lived there briefly. I have been to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) few times and it’s worth the visit. A couple of years ago I took my family to Siem Reap on holidays as I know the entire place like a local. We did an Airbnb and stayed in a beautiful independent bungalow. The local host himself was a Japanese speaking guide for Angkor Wat. I had requested for his expertise to make my family visit of Angkor Wat a memorable one, which he did. Usually, it takes 2 days to finish the entire Angkor Wat complex. We had kept a spare day to explore offbeat destinations surrounding Siem Reap. The host recommended us to pay a visit to Phnom Kulen that is about 50 kilometers from Siem Reap with 1.5 hour car drive. It is not advisable to go by Tuk-tuk and also it’s too hot out there. He narrated the story of popular Hollywood movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider being shot there at a stunning waterfall. We had already been to all the temples (inside Angkor Wat complex) where many of the movie sequences were filmed. There was no need to add anything more to that. Obviously, I wasn’t too interested, but my family was excited. I admit, the host didn’t try to oversell the location to us. These are Photoshopped image of the waterfall to lure tourists. (image credit: Google) Did you see the pictures above? They look stunning…right? The host called up a local friend of his to drive us in his A/C car. Since, I was more like a local over there, we were offered the roundtrip for $100. Usually it costs no less than $150 for other tourists. You would wonder…$150 for just about 100 kms? Cambodia has become quite expensive now. It was not like this when I used to live there. Siem Reap receives more than 2 million tourists each year. He also arranged the entry tickets that was a whooping $20 per person, so $60 in total for three of us. Locals have free entry. The depressing drive to Phnom Kulen was through barren landscape. As we were nearing the place, paved road turned into a dirt road and we were asked to produce entry tickets. I asked the car owner that why do we need to pay $20 for such bad roads. He explained to me that there was no connectivity to this place earlier and the government was not too keen either. A private company made this road by cutting a small portion of Kulen mountain. The fees are collected by them and not by the government. “Phonm” in Khmer means mountain. I could figure out that this is a tourist trap. We had already spent $160 so far and we still had to pay for our food. I had already prepared myself for an unpleasant surprise. We reached the place and there was a pagoda (buddhist temple) with sleeping Buddha on a hillock. We first climbed there and I was totally unimpressed. This was the beginning of DISAPPOINTMENT. Then we walked about a kilometer to the waterfall. There is a small waterfall and then a larger one where Angelina Jolie had jumped in the movie. There were about 100 odd steps to go down to see the larger waterfall. The steps were quite steep and covered with Algae, which makes them slippery and dangerous. The locals recommended us to go down with extreme caution as the steps terminate directly at the river and it was gushing with heavy current. My family decided to skip as it was not worth the risk in a foreign land. However, I chose the opposite as I didn’t want other travelers to fall into this trap. I slowly and cautiously went down to have a glimpse of the waterfall that lures travelers and hyped up as “The Tomb Raider Waterfall” . I spent $200 and wasted my entire day to see this waterfall. This remains in my travel diary as the costliest waterfall I have ever seen. The water was very dirty and smelly. The river is sacred for the local so they were taking bath in muddy and dirty water. It was too risky to get into the water as the current was too heavy to flush you out. I met another tourist there who was equally disappointed. He informed me that he paid $15 for the entry ticket. He also informed me that he met other tourists who have paid only $10 each. There is no way a tourist can buy the entry ticket on his own. I later on discovered that the local agents only pay $5 to the company against the printed price of $20, the balance is their profit. I could not stand there for more than a few minutes. My family asked me “how was it?”. I just said you missed the $200 waterfall. The gentleman who drove us to this place was a nice person and he too was disappointed seeing our faces. He was helpless as he too had a family to feed. The best he could do was to offer us a complimentary ride to the airport later in the evening. This was the only dark spot in otherwise our memorable holiday in beautiful Cambodia.