Always wanted to go to Angkor Wat? Now’s the time

Next year maybe the busloads of Chinese tourists will be back but for now, Cambodia’s on a slow road out of COVID.

The Angkor Ticket office on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second-largest city, is designed to handle crowds with plenty of space for queues. Last Saturday, however, there was no waiting.

Angkor Wat visitor numbers are still well down on what they were pre-pandemic. In the year to December 8, just over 247,000 foreign tourists visited the temple complex. In 2019, there were 2.2 million international visitors and in 2018, when the temples were in danger of being loved too much, 2.6 million people came.

For now, though, at visitor peak hour, which is around 5am – in time for dawn and before it gets hot – motorised tuk-tuks that dispense one or two travellers at a time outnumber the tourist buses. This is great for visitors, but the slow recovery is one more test for locals keen to turn their back on the pandemic years.

https://www.afr.com/world/asia/always-wanted-to-go-to-angkor-wat-now-s-the-time-20221208-p5c4rv