At Angkor Wat, ‘you have one of the world’s wonders to yourself’

Standing shoulder to shoulder, jostling for the perfect angle, hordes of tours used to gather before dawn each morning to watch the sun rise over the magnificent ancient temple of Angkor Wat.
Motivating this multinational scrum was the chance to capture an iconic photograph of the monument’s spires mirrored on the surface of a near pond.
“It was like a sea of people in front of the reflecting pool,” said Rares Ispas, a dent from New Zealand, recalling his visit to the celebrated Cambodian monument four years ago.
But that was before COVID-19 brought global tourism to a screeching halt.
A small group of visitors to the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia, at sunrise. (Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
This time, on a visit in late January, Rares and his wife were treated to a sublime experience that may never come again: They were almost alone at Angkor Wat, a bucket-l destination for untold millions whose enormous crowds could make the experience feel more like a theme park than a sanctum.
“This was the perfect opportunity,” said Rares, who now lives in Singapore. “You can’t help but feel a bit special when you have one of the world’s wonders to yourself.”
Cambodia, a nation of 17 million people wedged between Thailand and Vietnam, reopened to fully vaccinated tours in mid-November with entry requirements among the least restrictive in Asia.

The country, headed Asia’s longest-serving authoritarian leader, Prime Miner Hun Sen, was recently ranked second only to Taiwan in the Nikkei COVID-19 Recovery Index for its successful handling of the pandemic. With 84% of the population fully vaccinated, daily cases fell to nearly zero in December but have been rising with the omicron variant, and are now averaging about 350.
Even so, the sprawling Angkor Wat complex, considered the world’s largest religious structure, has sat largely empty during this peak tour season, which runs from November to March.
A couple visits Ta Prohm temple at the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.(Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
Residents say the last time there were so few tours here was in the early 1990s, when the country was recovering from decades of civil war and the Khmer Rouge genocide known as the “killing fields,” which wiped out a generation of leaders, teachers and intellectuals.
In the years before the pandemic, the Angkor complex — a stunning collection of Hindu and Buddh temple complexes in various stages of ruin and restoration — was one of the most popular destinations in Southeast Asia and a major source of foreign revenue for the country. More than 6.6 million international tours visited Cambodia in 2019, more than a third of them from China. But last year, fewer than 200,000 foreign visitors came.

An aerial view of the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia at sunrise. Cambodia has been open to foreign tours for months, but in this time of COVID-19, few have made the trip. (Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
An aerial view of the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. (Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
A few miles from the Angkor Archaeological Park, the city of Siem Reap was once overflowing with tours who packed its hotels, restaurants, bars and souvenir shops. But during what should be the high season, it felt like a ghost town.
Most businesses were closed, and many workers had left for the countryside. Until recently, a “Happy New Year 2020” sign still hung prominently over one of Siem Reap’s main streets, as if the town had been frozen in time. The once-thriving night market had become a dark, desolate street.
Since Cambodia’s reopening, the number of overseas tours has been gradually increasing. On one morning in early March, several dozen tours attended the Angkor Wat sunrise, up from just a handful.
But at lesser-known temples like Preah Palilay, where moss-covered faces carved into stone peer out from the ruins, it is still possible to spend hours in contemplation without seeing another visitor. In the stillness and solitude, it is easy to imagine that you alone had just rediscovered these monuments from a different age, so long swallowed up and kept secret the jungle.

The Bayon temple at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.(Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
At the popular Bayon temple, famous for its giant stone heads, one of the few visitors was a monkey that felt free to wander around, climbing to the top of one of the massive stone towers, surveying the scenery from its high perch.
Cambodia’s reeling tourism industry got a significant lift in mid-December when Singapore Airlines resumed service between Singapore and Siem Reap, the first international flights to arrive since March 2020. Earlier this month, Thai Smile began flying again between Bangkok and Siem Reap.
Cycls on one of the newly built bike paths connecting Siem Reap, Cambodia, to the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat. (Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
Over the past 15 months, Siam Reap received a major face-lift, with nearly 70 miles of newly paved roads, renovated sidewalks and re-landscaped parks along the small Siem Reap River, which flows through town. Newly built bike paths connect Siem Reap and the temples.
“I’ve settled on cycling as the best way to discover the nooks & crannies of the spectacular Angkor Archaeological Park,” the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, W. Patrick Murphy, posted on Twitter in January. “The new bike paths help!”

Angkor was once the seat of the Khmer Empire, which ruled much of Southeast Asia between the 9th and the 15th centuries. At its height, Angkor is believed to have had a population of nearly 1 million, making it one of the world’s largest cities at the time.
An abandoned water park near the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Thomas Crofoletti/The New York Times)
In the mid-19th century, French explorers were stunned to come across the temples, many of them completely overgrown vegetation. International efforts to stabilize and restore the temples began soon after, only to be disrupted the bloody conflicts that engulfed the country in the 1970s and 1980s before resuming in the early 1990s.
Tourism to Angkor got a major, global boost in 2001, when the ancient city was highlighted in the film “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” The movie was partly shot at Angkor Wat and at Ta Prohm, a temple beloved for the huge 200-year-old trees that grow from the ruins.
Tourism revenue aside, some younger Cambodians say they miss the large crowds at the temples, where mingling with fellow Cambodians and people from all over the world is part of the attraction for locals.
“There are two ways of thinking,” said Deourn Samnang, 25, a tech worker from a neighboring province. “We like to go to a place with a lot of people and see the other people. Western people like to go to a place and see the nature.”
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