High Impact Tourism

Angkor Wat Traffic

Early morning traffic, Angkor gate

In 1993, after Angkor was added to Unesco’s World Heritage List, just 7,650 intrepid visitors ventured to the site. Last year Sokimex, the oil company controversially granted the entrance concession on behalf of the government’s Apsara Angkor management, sold almost 900,000 tickets worth $25m (£12.8m), with British travellers making up the fourth biggest contingent behind South Koreans, Japanese and North Americans. Three million visitors are expected in 2010. Guardian

Three million visitors! Imagine three million visitors tromping through your home. It’s not built for three million visitors to start with, right, there’s no plumbing for that, and the couch can’t take it, plus, everyone’s going to be touching stuff they’re not supposed to be touching, and standing on that one step that you know is rickety but no one else does, and dropping stuff accidentally and leaning on things and just generally exerting massive wear and tear on the place.

Your place is built for, say, a family of four, and the occasional house full of 20-30 friends, most of whom are hanging out in the yard and being really thoughtful and considerate of your possessions. Not for three million stomping visitors. But that’s what it’s like at Angkor Wat. Everyone runs roughshod over the place, breaking stuff, touching things, going where they’re not supposed to go, just trouncing all over everything in a massive, human impact causing herd. It’s depressing and angering and yes, I was part of the giant cloud of locusts descending on the cultural crop of Cambodia, chowing down and buzzing off, leaving my sweaty fingerprints everywhere.

I know I’m not supposed to project my fuzzy western values on far away nations. I’m not supposed to do one to one comparisons that pit the management of, say, North America’s national parks against the World Heritage sites of Southeast Asia. But I’m going to do it anyway. Because comparing those things proves that the knowledge of how to manage the tremendous environmental impact of all those humans on a precious resource exists, it’s not an unknown thing. And we’re a global citizenry, we no longer live in a vacuum where it’s impossible to find out, while you’re in, oh, Cambodia, how resources are managed in, let’s say, Yosemite National Park. Okay, okay, I’ll step away from doing it on a broad, management level basis.

But that’s not going to stop me from saying that you, individual visitor to precious site, could STOP BEING SUCH A FREAKING JERK, ALREADY! A-hem. Please indulge my bossy side while I present Five Ways Not To Be A High Impact Tourist:

High Impact Tourism

High impact tourists

  1. For the love of god, read something about appropriate attire and then, observe the guidelines. You wouldn’t go to your cousin’s bar mitzvah in a tube top and short shorts, would you? How on earth do you get to thinking it’s okay dress like that for sacred sites in other cultures? Save it for the backpacker’s bar later, okay, hot stuff?
  2. Read the freakin’ signs. If it says don’t enter, just don’t. There are about nine million other scenic spots for you to take a photo, do you have to do it right where it says you absolutely should not? No. No you do not.
  3. Pack it in, pack it out. What, you can’t wait until you get back to the hotel or into town or, hey, to a garbage can, even, to throw away that candy bar wrapper/empty water bottle/etc? Give me a break.
  4. Say “No thank you” politely and firmly, but don’t make a federal case out of it. Yeah, the touts are annoying and from time to time, yes, they are trying to rip you off. Keep your head, Rambo. Ultimately, they’re trying to relieve you of some of your hard earned dollars so they can do stuff like, oh, feed a family. It’s okay not to buy, it’s not okay to be obnoxious about it. Walk away.
  5. Move your ass, already. Yeah, it’s crowded and yeah, you’re trying to look, but so are three million other people. If you think you’re going to get some unspoiled perfect moment without that one guy in the tank top wrecking it, oh, you are in for a long wait, and you are not the only one. Take your pictures and move along. If you want the empty sites, you’re going to have pay the bucks for a specialized tour, otherwise, you’re stuck with the Disneyland crowds with the rest of us. Sorry.

Yeah, I’m superior and obnoxious, already. Yeah, I have about a million unsubstantiated ideas about how tourism to Angkor could be improved and yeah, it’s easy for me to say stuff like, whoa, someone needs to restrict the numbers already, because heh heh, I just got my eyeprints all over it, so it’s fine for them to lock it down now so you can’t get in until May, 2018. And yeah, that’s totally unfair. But rather than focusing on that stuff, maybe you could just not be such a high impact jerk, okay. Not you, I mean…you know who I’m talking to. Right?

Angkor Wat

Organizations you could help by not being such a dork

Our pictures of Angkor Wat are posted here. There is no way they can do it justice.

[tags]Angkor Wat, tourism, sustainable travel[/tags]

6 thoughts on “High Impact Tourism”

  1. Your post makes me think of Anthony Bourdain in Romania, on a recent ep of ‘No Reservations.’ Bourdain is ambling through a Romanian town that’s devoid of people except his hosts and crew, and said that Romania must have a large force dedicated to fighting the scourge of tourism. Really funny.

    And what’s wrong with tube tops? I wear them everywhere, even in the winter.

    Reply
  2. There’s a really good treatment of this topic in “Smile While You’re Lying”. Which is a great book, can’t remember where I picked it up (champione, champione, ole, ole, ole). Although I was annoyed when I wasn’t allowed in St Peters in the Vatican because I was wearing knee-length shorts. I thought, Lord-Bless-Us-and-Save-Us, it’s unnatural hot and I have a right by birth and baptism to walk into the church, dressed in animal hides, if the spirit move me.

    Reply
  3. I think the invironment should be get the covervation by the government and the local people. The invironment is the best point that could attract the tourists came to visit our Country (Cambodia). So please every one kinly consrve it, start from us, and it should be the simble tho last children.

    Reply
  4. Loved options number 5! haha if your going to go to one of the world’s biggest ancient tourist attractions, you are going to find that thousands of people had the same idea on the same day.

    There are many places in the world that are equally as impressive without the crowds…

    I once spent sunset at sitting at the top of Borobudur in Indonesia with no one around apart from the company i was with – magic!

    go and find your own place for yourself!

    Paul

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.