Angkor Wat: A Temple to Tourism?

Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the famous ruins, is booming, and luxury hotels, galleries, golf courses and spas are rising to meet demand

by Susan Postlewaite

Elephants sway in the steamy heat, carrying tourists along the jungle paths around the ancient stone temples, while overhead the occasional hot air balloon or helicopter goes by, taking other visitors on an aerial tour of Angkor Wat and nearby ruins. Inside the temples tourists from all corners of the world clamber over the stones, shoot video and fan themselves in the midday sun. When dusk comes the crowds climb onto their tuk tuks, bikes, and buses to make the eight kilometer trip back to the town of Siem Reap.

Not long ago a dusty village with a few dozen tour guides and guest houses, Siem Reap now hosts several thousand tourists a night in the high season as Cambodia launches itself in the mass tourism market. Ten years ago, with the country still emerging from decades of civil war and tumult, Cambodia received 217,000 visitors. "Last year we got 2.1 million," crows Tourism Minister Thong Khon. "Almost 50% of them came to the temples," he adds. By 2010, Thong Khon expects the number to reach 3 million.

Although Angkor Wat and the dozens of other temples built between the 9th and 14th centuries are the main attraction, the industry has moved astonishingly quickly to bring in the extras that will keep the tourists in town more than a day or two: spas, shopping boutiques, handicraft markets, galleries, ice cream shops. There's a special road called Pub Street lined with international cafes and trendy art bars, golf courses, upscale dining, horseback riding tours, cooking classes, convention activities, a night market, temple-side dinners for two or for dozens, and nature tours.

Rebuilding Since Khmer Rouge

The rustic guest houses where 10 years go visitors risked getting tropical fever from a mosquito bite are gone, replaced by five-star architectural gems and multi-story, mass market hotels with buffet lines and door-to-door bus tour packages. "What's fascinating to me is that the most demanding customer can find anything he wants in this little village that has boomed in only five years because of its cultural heritage," says Julia Fesenberg, marketing communications manager for Raffles, the Singapore-based chain that operates the French colonial era Grand Hotel d'Ángkor in the center of town.

The government, seeing the potential for major tourism revenues, has been working for a decade to get international development agencies and donors like Japan to rebuild roads, bridges, and airports to recreate the tourism industry that was decimated in the early 1970s during the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and then by the Khmer Rouge and their radical Maoist takeover. The strategy has worked so well that tourists now come year round, although the crowds are much smaller in the April—September low season.

In the high season, when the weather is cooler and dry, wealthy South Americans come in private jets, and rich Russians come on charter flights. Hundreds of thousands of Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, European, and American tourists come on direct flights from places like Singapore and Bangkok. "Everyone is happy. The government is happy, the prime minister is happy, in terms of the international arrivals," says Mohan Rao Gunti, tourism consultant for the Cambodian Association of Travel Agents.

No Longer a Dangerous Place

In the late 1990s, much of the temple area was still hazardous. There were land mines and bandits, and the five-hour boat trip up the Tonle Sap from Phnom Penh could be dangerous: Sometimes boats sank and there was occasional sniper fire. The surrounding low mountains visible from the temples were under the control of the Khmer Rouge. Now the news from the town is about new golf courses, the crackdown on littering, and the opening of Swensen's ice cream.