In his book Hard Travel to Sacred Places, Rudolph Wurlitzer recounts his 1993 trip to the Angkor ruins. He and his wife had exactly one lodging choice, the Grand Hôtel D'Angkor. Nothing but its name was grand. According to Wurlitzer, Siem Reap "has the run-down, desultory air of a frontier town.... There are no phones or public transportation... and the electricity is constantly going off and on." While Wurlitzer tours Angkor Wat, he hears gunshots from the woods -- 'bird hunters', his nervous guide tries to reassure him.
History, like violence, moves swifter than we think. In 1993, the Khmer Rouge still controlled the Siem Reap sruk (political district), and almost no one claiming sanity risked a trip to Angkor. As late as 1998 errant guerillas were still kidnapping and killing tourists. But Angkor has changed. In 1999, an estimated 60,000 people visited; in 2001, when I went, that number quadrupled. It will probably do so again well before 2010, the year the Cambodian government aims to ring up a million visitors to the temples. In December 2002, the New York Times reported that the opera tenor José Carreras starred in a gala fundraiser, singing amid Khmer apsara dancers under laserlights, right in front of the hulking majesty of Angkor Wat. For $1,500, you could nibble a chocolate-macadamia tart and watch this spectacle, then go back and wallow in your room at Le Grand Hôtel D'Angkor, which has been restored to match the opulence of its name and now costs $300 a night.
On my third day at Angkor, I asked my driver about visiting one of the remotest temple sites. He said it would cost more than double the $8 daily rate I'd been paying him, in order to buy "protection." But that was the only sniff of danger I got except for the standing caution about land mines and beaten paths. Amenities abounded in Siem Reap: lodging options ranged from one to five stars; Western-style bars and restaurants clogged every block; and the clusters of idling cabs and motos for cheap hire on every street corner obviated the need for public transportation. Google retrieves 21,000 sites for the search string 'Angkor Tours'. There is angkor.com, angkors.com, angkoradventure.com -- and my (least) favorite, Angkor Dirt Bike Tours, which offers, among other dubious adventures, "Bokor Rally Raid and Rave."
The area around Angkor has hosted some of Cambodia's longest and worst strife. Thailand has tried to annex the province for centuries, in order to grab both the temples and the land around it. Later, the French-Japanese title squabble focused on the Angkorean jewels. In the early 1970s, Pol Pot's forces seized the area, and used it as the base for their assault on the country; Siem Reap remained the Khmer Rouge's final stronghold for years after the regime's official demise, rife with bandits and terrorism. With this fresh and furious march of tourism right behind centuries of violence, Siem Reap feels explosive and unstable: precisely like a frontier town, except we're not seeking gold in the hills (we bring our own) but sacred temples. History may run swift, but character lags behind it. Wurlitzer's Siem Reap -- "run-down, desultory" -- matched mine, despite the siege of prosperity.