Cambodia is one of my favorite countries (so are you Vietnam!)... the people are beautiful and kind... their music art and dance are breathtaking.... I love it there.
As Cambodia recovers from the madness of the Khmer Rouge and a legacy of atrocity that rattles the mind and sickens the heart, her troubles now come in the form of the very thing that could save her...tourists. The article below articulates my concerns about this "oasis" being swallowed up....
Please save Cambodia! But where to start??
Invasion, genocide � and now the tourist hordes
From the Sunday Herald of Scotland
by Nick Meo in Angkor Wat
THE enigmatic carved faces that have stared out from the temples of Angkor Wat for the past 1000 years have seen much: the rise and fall of Cambodia�s god-kings, invasions by armies from Vietnam and Thailand, and vandalism by Khmer Rouge guerrillas who used the faces for target practice .
Now these images of old rulers gaze out at a new destructive threat: hordes of invading tourists. More than one million people visited the temple complex at Angkor Wat last year, turning neighbouring Siem Reap from a sleepy provincial backwater into a boomtown bursting with hotel construction sites, trendy restaurants, art galleries and travel agencies.
Luxury spas and resorts are sprouting up all over the country and eco-tourism is taking off in a wilderness in which exotic hill tribes haven�t seen a foreigner since the French colonialists departed. The millions of dollars the visitors spend are badly needed in one of Asia�s poorest nations, now relatively safe for tourists but still scarred by years of war and the communist reign of terror in which a third of the population were killed.
The new invaders may be well-heeled and are usually well-intentioned, but with their arrival come problems. Their presence puts more pressure on ancient sites and creates a market for looted antiquities. Some tourists are themselves a menace, out to exploit one of Asia�s nastiest under-age sex scenes.
Read the rest here.
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