GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 66

1994, the first full year of peace, to nearly 3 million in 2011. Cambodia's online visa ser-
vice makes it one of the easiest countries to visit.
The reason for the influx is Angkor, which now has a permanent spot on the lists of one
hundred places you must see before you die. The spires of Angkor have joined the rarefied
company of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and the Great Wall of Ch-
ina as ancient wonders on any traveler's list. Travel writers gush over the sheer number of
temples. The sculpted faces of the Bayon are routinely described as otherworldly. In that
sense, little has changed. Ancient poets tried to capture the magnificence of the Angkor
era with its city of temples “enclosed in immense walls like the mountains that girdle the
world . . . ponds dotted with lotus flowers in bloom that echoed with the scream of flamin-
goes and cranes . . . grand avenues, streets and squares with wide staircases, houses, as-
sembly halls and the abodes of the gods.”
Most of that is long gone, lost when the Angkor Empire fell and the capital moved to
Phnom Penh. The intricate water system of ponds and irrigation ditches is a shadow of its
old self. Now heat and dust await tourists arriving by taxi at the main entry gate to pay the
$20 government fee and join the often-immense crowds. The splendid sacred spaces are
lost in a scrum of foreigners with guides shouting in competing languages. There is no
limit to the number of people allowed in the tourist complex.
The guides have a hard time. “It is not good. Most of the time we miss specific parts of
a tour because there are too many people and we are pushed around, pushed away,” said
Yut, a guide. “We guides talk about this and many more things—there should be regula-
tions about how many people are allowed in during the day, more areas should be roped
off, more wooden walkways, and they should stop putting spikes in elephants' heads to
control them—that makes the elephants cry.”
The tourists have a difficult time, and the frustration can be intolerable until they catch
a first glimpse of the spires, see the sensuous curve of an Apsara (angel) statue nestled in a
temple, and find their way to Ta Prohm, the temple left as the early French archeologists
found it with roots of the banyan and fig trees folded over the stones, the jungle encasing
the sacred.
I saw all this through the eyes of my daughter Lily when we took a mother-daughter
trip there for her twenty-fifth birthday. After three days she had fallen in love with Angkor,
rising early to be the first at the entry gate and staying until the last minute before clos-
ing time at sunset. She was in no mood to hear me complain, often, about the irritating
crowds that block your view and destroy the spirit of Angkor. She asked me to please stop
being so annoying. On the last day she went off on her own.
It was true. I was guilty of nostalgia and unrealistic hopes that Angkor would recover
its old grace. I apologized, and that afternoon we sat together watching the sun set over
Angkor.