If you’re on a staycation and you’ve run out of things to watch on Netflix, here’s an alternative: Call someone living in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and he’ll take you on a one-on-one tour of local temples and floating villages. For 45 minutes, the cost is $17.
Cooee, a website that connects would-be travelers with tour guides in Cambodia, Croatia, Nepal, and elsewhere, was launched by a small tour company early in the pandemic.
“My immediate thoughts went to our guides,” says Steve Wilson, cofounder of Aspiring Adventures, the New Zealand-based tour company that started the new platform and that was in the middle of giving tours in Peru when the coronavirus shut down travel. (Cooee is an Australian Aboriginal word meaning “come here,” but is now commonly used in Australia and New Zealand to call over long distances.) The company wanted to make sure…
