Angkor Wat Was Overtouristed. Today It’s Nearly Empty. What Now?

I’ve done a lot of unorthodox things for the sake of writing about them: I’ve eaten a still-beating snake heart in Vietnam; I’ve hiked for days across part of Kenya; I’ve gotten tipsy on vodka with old Ukrainian ladies in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. But staying home for a year and a half? It was inconceivable.

I once wrote a magazine profile of filmmaker John Waters. He wanted to go hitchhiking. After we were picked up down the street from his Baltimore home, he looked back at me and said, “I think it’s dangerous to stay home. Never going out and seeing the world and meeting new and interesting people? Now, that’s dangerous.” For the next year and a half, Waters’s proclamation would be flipped on its head.

On the last morning in Siem Reap before my flight back to New York, I planted myself at a table outside a cafe sipping an espresso and watching a stray chicken trying to decide if it was going to cross the road. At the time, the virus was still more or less contained within Wuhan (or so we thought). And some of the people I met there speculated about it—all with a sense of unease about the potential of a pandemic—wondering if this invisible invader was going to cross the road as well. Almost eclipsing that sense of unease, though, was general excitement about the changes afoot in Siem Reap. Most visitors based themselves in the city to visit the nearby complex of fabled Hindu and Buddhist temples. But in recent years, the town of 140,000 people had evolved into a destination in itself, adding more luxury hotels, cocktail lounges, art galleries, boutiques and innovative Cambodian restaurants.

Back in 1901, Siem Reap consisted of three neighboring villages. That same year some of the first Western tourists arrived, lured by word of ancient temples overtaken by the jungle. By 1909, the first hotel opened, Hotel des Ruins. In 1932, the Grand Hotel d’Angkor (now run by the Raffles hotel group) swung open its doors. But by 1975, under the threat of the Khmer Rouge, Siem Reap became depopulated, as town dwellers fled to the countryside. The Grand Hotel d’Angkor shut down and was used as a prison, then reopened in 1997 once Raffles acquired it.

After the last of the Khmer Rouge had been defeated in 1999, Siem Reap started to slowly change. In 2001, Sofitel flicked on its lights for the first time here. Three years later Le Meridien did the same. Then a new threat emerged: overtourism. Siem Reap and its temple complex, Angkor Wat, eventually became too popular, drawing more than 2 million tourists every year to march in and around the fragile relics. In November 2019, Fodor’s Travel included Angkor Wat in its 2020 “No List”—a compilation of destinations that the editors discourage travelers from visiting, citing ethical, environmental and political concerns. For Angkor Wat, the editors noted that “literal wear and tear brought on to the 900-year-old temples is having damaging effects,” as was a water shortage due to a drought and “exacerbated by hotels in the Siem Reap area.” They called for restrictions on tourist numbers and access. By a cruel twist of fate, that’s exactly what happened.

While Cambodia largely kept coronavirus at bay last year, the case numbers spiked this past February. As a result, the country’s borders are still closed and most tourist-related and hospitality businesses are either temporarily or permanently shuttered until autumn 2021 at the earliest.

“Siem Reap now feels like a sleepy country town,” said Lara Dunston, a food and travel writer based in the city, when I emailed her last week. “Since March 2020, it’s felt like one of those off-season resort towns in Europe.” According to Cambodian tour guide Lim Leangsreng, the government is making the best of the tourism downturn by upgrading roads in the center of Siem Reap and around the temples of Angkor Wat. “The area around the temples looks beautiful right now,” he said, “not just because of the emptiness but because of the infrastructure improvements. We are ready for the world to come here, whenever you are ready.”

—David Farley is the author of “An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town.”