Tourist jungle grows over Angkor Wat

Government officials are frantically rushing to catch up. In recent months, they have launched a number of initiatives aimed at averting disaster – including new road projects, a 20-hectare reservoir, a beautification plan, and a new electricity agreement with Thailand. The French are financing a $5 million wastewater plant, and the government is seeking funds from the Asian Development Bank to build another.

But money is always in short supply in this impoverished nation, and officials say the projects are just a start of what's needed, especially if tourism continues to grow at its current rate.

Donors ponied up about $50 million between 1993 and 2003 to restore the temples after UNESCO designated them World Heritage Sites, says Nao Hayashi-Deni, a cultural program official at UNESCO in Phnom Penh.

And Siem Reap is "considered a success story compared to other worldwide heritage sites. But "donors tend to invest money in the temples themselves because it's more visible and easier to showcase their activities," she says.

In 2003, UNESCO voted to set up a committee on sustainable tourism, complete with a panel experts to evaluate the impact of building plans on the area. But so far, no one has provided funding to hire the experts.

The government seems reluctant to interfere in the growth; Siem Reap is one of its few cash cows. In 2004, international tourists spent $97 million in Siem Reap, of which more than two-thirds stayed in the province, according to a 2005 study financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). More than 5,000 people work in hotels alone, and overall tourism created about 29,400 jobs.

Without any intervention, the number of visitors could rise to more than 4.3 million in 2020. About 87 hotels are now operating. More than 150 are planned. In the past two years alone, property values along Rt. 6 have tripled – from $300 a square meter to $900 a square meter, according to city officials.

Some planners fear the continued growth of "mass tourism" is not sustainable. JICA's warns that, as it continues, the town is becoming even less attractive to the moneyed, discriminating tourists who could provide Siem Reap with a stable future.

"The town itself is neither attractive nor comfortable enough for nongroup tourists to move around by themselves," explains the JICA study.

So rather than control the tourism, local officials are trying to spruce the town up.

Siem Reap inaugurated a new French-funded international airport early this month. Recently the government finished a road that loops in front of the airport, to Rte. 6, and around to the temples. The new road creates an additional path to the temples and will help mitigate traffic. City officials are also hoping to clean up the banks of the Siem Reap River.

"We cannot stop the mass tourists and we still need them," Tep Vattho says. "But we need to improve the appearance of the town. If we can send men into outer space, surely we can solve this problem."

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