Cambodians Wary of Angkor Museum

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  07.07.08 | 4:33 PM ET

A new Thai-backed museum/mall complex located a few miles from Angkor Wat is drawing fire from Cambodians skeptical of the enterprise’s motives. The New York Times reports that restoration specialists are unhappy with the Angkor National Museum’s “aesthetics” and lack of scholarly content, while others suspect that the Thais have designs on Cambodia’s architectural heritage. In fact, anti-Thai riots erupted in 2003 over the issue of Angkor’s provenance.

Given that the for-profit museum is borrowing relics from Cambodia’s National Museum to lend its collection legitimacy, it seems little more than a “cultural mall,” as one Unesco official put it. Unfortunately, it’s a mall that could stir nationalist sentiments.

Related on World Hum:
* When Microbes Attack… World Landmarks
* New Discoveries at Cambodia’s Angkor

Photo by tylerdurden1 via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Asia, Cambodia, Thailand

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


1 Comment for Cambodians Wary of Angkor Museum

Allen Varney 07.07.08 | 7:04 PM ET

The mall “could stir nationalist sentiments”—not that stirring xenophobic Khmer nationalism has ever proven hard. The Cambodian political scene isn’t exactly laid-back.
This latest touristic offering seems of a piece with the “genocide tourism” on offer at the Choueng Ek Killing Fields monument and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (AKA Security Prison 21). These tasteless places are only possible in the vacuum of leadership regarding the Angork tourism infrastructure.

The international specialists concerned about the mall-ing of Khmer culture could marshall the resources to organize a more tasteful alternative. Unfortunately, they’re a conflicted gaggle: At least six unconnected and uncoordinated Western agencies are restoring the Khmer monuments; each agency espouses its own approach and techniques. Someone, somewhere, needs a vision. Unfortunately, it looks like the Thai mall-museum is as close as we’re going to get.

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