GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 69

What the foreign governments can discuss are ideas—ideas about regulating the cir-
culation of visitors in the temples; encouraging people to visit more than the “big three,”
which includes Angkor Wat, considered the Mona Lisa of Cambodia; preserving some
bas-relief under glass; and building wooden stairs over the worn stone steps for over-sized
foreign tourists.
Other organizations are less inhibited about describing the damage. The nonprofit
Global Heritage Fund reported in 2010 that “hundreds of thousands of visitors climb over
the ruins of Angkor every year causing heavy deterioration of original Khmer stonework.”
The report about safeguarding cultural sites said this was inevitable given that the number
of visitors to Angkor Wat has increased by 188 percent since 2000.
A mounting problem is water. Siem Reap does not have the modern water and waste
system to accommodate these tourists. The temple foundations are sinking as the sur-
rounding water table is being drained by hotels that drill down as deep as 260 feet into
ponds and underground aquifers, emptying them in order to have enough water to allow
tourists to shower and flush toilets, to clean their clothes and to irrigate hotel landscapes
and golf courses at an unsustainable rate. There is no adequate system to filter and dispose
of the resulting sewage and the Siem Reap River has been polluted from the irresponsible
dumping of waste.
The result is an ongoing threat to the foundation of the temples. At the Bayon, fifty-four
towers have started sinking into the ground. Experts worry that the sandy soil is becoming
so unstable it could threaten other temples.
Son Soubert, an archeologist and member of Cambodia's Constitutional Council, said
he first raised the serious threat of sinking temples in 1995 but to little avail. “Obviously
our authorities are mindless and see only the financial benefits, to the detriment of the
monuments they are meant to preserve and restore,” he told me.
The World Bank sounded a similar alarm in a 2006 report on tourism in Cambodia,
stating that because of poorly regulated mass tourism in Siem Reap “energy, water, sewage
and waste are all significant problems.”
The same foreign governments that restore the temples have been given the additional
responsibility of solving the water problem. In a report, the groups euphemistically said
that water is “a complex issue wherein the survival of the temples must be reconciled with
the sometimes effervescent get-up-and-go of Siem Reap town.”
With the Cambodian government's approval, Japan drew up a master plan and is build-
ing a water supply system for the city of Siem Reap. Korea began building new drainage
and sewage networks. France is cleaning up the Tonlé Sap River. The Asian Development
Bank is loaning money for some of the projects, and a few hotels have promised to install
recycling systems for their used water, all with the aim of repairing the damage done by
draining the water table.