GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 68

“It is not as simple as you think,” he told me. “Without the tourists, there would be no
restoration, no research,” he said.
That is the price the foreign preservationists and archeologists pay: they have become a
very sophisticated clean-up crew, repairing damage caused by tourism as the quid pro quo
for the privilege of working at Angkor. The arrangement goes something like this. Angkor
draws in the millions of tourists who bring in billions of dollars to this poor country. That
tourism volume, in turn, draws the attention of foreign investors who put more money into
the country, much of which lands in the private bank accounts of officials. The system
works brilliantly for some, but it rests on the splendor of those temples in Angkor. They
have to be restored and maintained.
This is where the foreign archeologists and their governments enter the picture. In or-
der to have the key role in Angkor, sixteen foreign governments offered to provide their
expertise, their labor and their money to restore and research the site. The Cambodian
government accepted this proposition on the express condition that this work cannot in-
terfere with tourism at Angkor.
These countries, along with the United Nations, became part of the International
Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of
Angkor (ICC-Angkor). The Cambodian government created a complementary Apsara as-
sociation that works with the foreigners while the Cambodian government retains author-
ity over all decisions regarding Angkor as “an historic site, a natural site and a tourist site.”
To streamline the effort, each country “adopts” a temple for restoration and posts
signs showing that Hungary, Japan, India or the United States is financing the recovery
and maintenance of that temple. Germany is the master for stone conservation. France
trained a 300-member Cambodian heritage police force to prevent thieves from hacking
off statues, bas-reliefs and lintels with hammers and saws. Now theft has largely ended in
the official Angkor area. All of the countries praise the “very great openness of the Cam-
bodian authorities to debate aspects of the country's economic, environmental and social
policies that elsewhere would remain jealously guarded.”
Soutif said that forgetting the tourism angle, this proposition works. “It's easy to raise
money for Angkor—a belle image !” And Cambodia wins friends in the rarefied world of
the arts for being wise enough to avail itself of foreign expertise and money to preserve
what is a cultural heritage of the world.
“For years we've worked daily with these people, helping to form the Cambodian arche-
ologists,” said Soutif, who listed all of the scholarships and studies abroad for them. “It's a
unique example for a developing country and a good example for UNESCO [the United
Nations agency that created the system].”
One report by the association stated the limits of their influence: “We don't discuss what
they should do, we don't have the right—that is a Cambodian question but we can have
conversations about issues.”