Problem reading UTF-8 text from excel files

I need to read excel files and load the data into a database.
I decided to save the files as xml spreadsheets b/c it made reading the data much easier.
However, I've been having trouble reading text in languages other than English. The files I use display the text correctly, but something must be going wrong during the read action.

This is what my code looks like:

if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['pricefile']['tmp_name'],$path)){
    $dom = new DomDocument('1.0');
    $dom->_defaultEncoding = 'iconv';
    $dom->load(basename($_FILES['pricefile']['name']));
    if($dom){
      $rows = $dom->getElementsByTagName('Row');
      $i=0;
      foreach($rows as $row){
        
        if($i>0){ // ignore first line
          $index = 1;
          $cells = $row->getElementsByTagName( 'Cell' );
          
          foreach( $cells as $cell ){
            $ind = $cell->getAttribute( 'Index' );
            if ( $ind != null ) $index = $ind;
            
            if ( $index == 1 ) $prc = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 2 ) $sup = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 3 ) $stg = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 4 ) $type = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 5 ) $st = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 6 ) $en = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 7 ) $eq = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 8 ) $cst = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 9 ) $p1 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 10 ) $p2 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 11 ) $p3 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 12 ) $p4 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 13 ) $p5 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 14 ) $d1 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 15 ) $d2 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 16 ) $d3 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 17 ) $d4 = $cell->nodeValue;
            if ( $index == 18 ) $d5 = $cell->nodeValue;
            
            $index++;
          }
        }
        $i++;
        
        AddRecord($prc, $sup, $stg, $type, $st, $en, $eq, $cst, $p1, $p2, $p3, $p4, $p5, $d1, $d2, $d3, $d4, $d5);
      }
    }
  }

PHP:

can anyone help?