GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 67

On a subsequent trip I learned that my complaints weren't so far off the mark. It turns
out that those crowds are extremely bad for Angkor. It took five hundred years, beginning
in the late twelfth century, to build this complex of temples and walkways, moats and
causeways, which culminated in the reign of Jayavarman VII. Now, in less than a decade,
the onslaught of tourists and tourist developments is threatening their very foundation.
The temples of Angkor were built for worship and contemplation. The rulers poured
their wealth into them, gilding the spires in gold and silver, commissioning carvings that
memorialized their conquests and statues of Hindu gods that were in fact carved to re-
semble the kings and queens of Angkor. Hundreds, not millions, walked the temples.
“For sure, these temples weren't made to welcome the world, only to pray to God. It
is a place solely for God, not even like a western Cathedral where people were meant to
assemble,” said Dominique Soutif, head of the EFEO Center.
Soutif was sitting in his office in Siem Reap, at the storied Center, where the restoration
and study of the temples was begun in 1907 by French archeologists and scholars who
literally rediscovered the ancient history of Cambodia through their work. My last visit to
that office had been in 1974, when war was advancing and Bernard-Philippe Groslier was
shutting down the Center. Statues were crated, marked and ready for shipment; libraries
carefully boxed. Through binoculars you could just see the spires of Angkor Wat five miles
away. One could sense a fear of impending loss.
Groslier and his father George, both scholars, had dedicated their lives to Angkor. Now
the son was forced to abandon it. I asked if he thought the Khmer Rouge would destroy
the temples. He shook his head and said no. The temples were too important to both sides:
to prove their nationalism, their patriotism, the superiority of the Cambodian culture. He
said he believed the armies would be more protective of the stones at Angkor than the
Cambodians who revered them. He was right. Through the six-year war and the Khmer
Rouge revolution that ended in 1979, the temples were left largely untouched. Whatever
damage they suffered was from decay.
Instead, since the war, the worst culprits have been bandits who stole the statuary, often
cutting off the heads, and now it is tourism. Soutif outlined the immediate damage being
done by the millions of tourists who march all over the temples, their fingers touching the
intricate carvings, their arms brushing up against the stones.
“Wat Phnom Bakheng, the temple on the hill, the effect of the daily traffic has de-
graded the temple considerably,” he began. “The steps of Angkor Wat are slippery from
the damage by tourists. Inevitably with millions of guests the bas-reliefs have been touched
by them and that's extremely detrimental. I've seen Korean guides hitting those bas-reliefs
with sticks to demonstrate an historical fact. It's all just inevitable.”
What can be done to reduce the sheer numbers of tourists and prevent this cumulative
damage? His answer was revelatory, as if the other shoe had dropped.