Results matching “Angkor Wat” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Our November/December issue is a special collector's edition, "50 Places of a Lifetime," and it's heading to a mailbox or newsstand near you. Here's the introduction to the package from the pages of the magazine; the complete list of all of our Places of a Lifetime can be found after the jump.

A decade ago, Traveler published a landmark issue-- "50 Places of a Lifetime"--that in subsequent years has become something of a hallmark of the magazine, spawning related books, podcasts, special issues, web content, games, mobile apps--even a round-the-world jet trip from National Geographic Expeditions to lift off in October 2010. Long before The Bucket List and 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, we sought to showcase those treasured destinations that every curious traveler should visit in a lifetime.

Now, in Traveler's 25th-anniversary year, we recognize the first 50 places and offer another 50 that speak to the transformation of travel since 1999--how we travel, where we travel, why we travel. Ten years ago, we could see the emerging signs of a new kind of journeying--one that puts a premium on sense of place, authenticity, culture, sustainability, and experience rather than mere sightseeing.

These elements became the compass we use to steer you to destinations that are more than just numbers in a hot list. Our first 50 picks were icons the world collectively recognizes as superlative. What we offer in the following pages is what sets this magazine apart. We go beyond the obvious. You'll see that we've picked locations of character--and asked those with a personal connection to them to tell us why they are important, unique, compelling. Some are places you may know but haven't seen the way we view them here. Others, we hope, are surprises that may seduce you to explore them firsthand. We address what makes a destination special, what will reward the traveler, why you should come here rather than go somewhere else. We are more sensitive than ever to the fact that many places we love most are deeply threatened--and our challenge is to preserve them for future generations. When they travel, I want my children to know the same joy I feel every time I discover somewhere new and different. We all begin that journey by finding a place that sings to us. We hope you find many destinations in these pages that do just that. --Keith Bellows, Editor in Chief

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Geotourism Challenge! The second annual competition to name outstanding efforts in sustainable tourism, sponsored by National Geographic's Center for Sustainable Destinations and Ashoka's Changemakers, unearthed a wealth of innovative efforts taking place around the globe. After an intense voting process, the panel of judges today named the three winners out of 611 original entries from 81 countries. Each of these organizations wins $5,000, which goes toward the further development of their program. And the winners are:

Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula. To date, Nature Air has compensated for nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through the protection of more than 500 acres. In addition, Nature Air recently helped develop Costa Rica's first alternative fueling station through its wholly owned fueling company, Aerotica. Nature Air fuels all ground equipment and vehicles with bio-diesel (a mix of recycled vegetable and cooking oils) collected from employees and restaurants.

PEPY ("Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself"), Cambodia's Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units. All participants make donations to enhance education in impoverished rural Cambodia, where PEPY is based. It supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12 villages and six schools in rural Siem Reap Province, about 40 miles from the city of Siem Reap, site of the Angkor temples.
 
Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on information -- including maps, photos and video -- submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations. Wikiloc is a great source of outdoor activities, from mountain biking to ballooning. The site also promotes thematic activities like gastronomic routes, sightseeing urban trails and walks in archaeological areas. Created in 2006, the site is already translated in 14 languages, and more than 65,000 trails are included.

Thanks to all those of you who submitted entries and voted in this year's contest. Visit the Geotourism Challenge website for more information on each of the winners, and to learn more about all of the finalists.

Photo: A cyclist from PEPY, Cambodia's Educational Volunteer Tourism program

For many people, Southeast Asia conjures up images of ancient stone temples, vibrant colors, spicy cuisine and warm, musky rains breathing life into lotus ponds.

But imagine instead hiking for miles shin-deep in mud, fending off bloodsucking leeches and existing on a diet of tarantulas and cockroaches, while risking infection, heatstroke and malaria. Not exactly your typical camping trip. For most people, such an excursion would sound treacherous and even insane, but for young herpetologist Perry Wood Jr.  it's simply a passionate pursuit of knowledge in the name of science.

When Perry (aka JR) Wood began studying Southeast Asian amphibians and reptiles more than eight years ago, he never imagined the rough trails and beautiful landscapes his fieldwork would lead him to. As a graduate biology student specializing in taxonomy and molecular systematics, Wood regularly makes trips to Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia in an effort to identify new species in what he explains is an understudied region for herpetological diversity.

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He's been guest-blogging about his experiences here on Intelligent Travel. Click here for recent posts.

What makes a place memorable? Often it's the people who live there, or did long ago: Think of Egypt, Mesa Verde, or Angkor Wat. It may even be a single person, as mind-body medicine pioneer Deepak Chopra discovered in Jerusalem. Here's part of his story from My Favorite Place on Earth:

"One day I walked down the Via Dolorosa, the street in the Old City where Jesus carried the cross. The stations of the cross are marked out, and I began my walk where he was sentenced, at Pontius Pilate's court. The second station is where Jesus was flagellated, the third where he fell and was helped up. And I ended at Calvary, the hill where he was crucified.

Guarded by giant seven-headed serpent gods high on an obscure mountain, in backcountry disputed by Thailand and Cambodia, is an ancient sacred site that's not on the regular tourist map.

 

Surrounded by landmines and bunkers from the Khmer Rouge era, and still caught up in today's border disputes, Preah Vihear, or "Holy Monastery," is a mysterious place few westerners have been able to visit.

 

Jon Ortner, photographer and author of the book "Angkor, Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire," shares his first encounters and impressions of the thousand-year-old sanctuary in this essay of words and photos composed especially for NatGeo News Watch.

Photographer:  David Dunai of San Francisco and Budapest

Getting the Shot:  This photo was taken at Angkor Wat in the jungles of Cambodia on a warm day in January.  
 
Details:  Initially, I was drawn to photograph the temples by themselves to represent the isolation of these ancient ruins in the middle of the jungle and show the otherworldly character of the structures built by a civilization long gone.

That however, turned out to be impossible as there was not a square inch free of my fellow tourists. So I changed my approach and decided to go for the quirky by juxtaposing these modern wanderers against the background of the ancient, massive palaces. When I spotted these two Chinese visitors in their fantastic tropical hiking outfit I could not stop clicking the shutter.

We Love: The juxtaposition of colorful, slightly surreal elements.  Despite its unarguable value as a cultural icon, Angkor Wat scored very poorly in stewardship in our 2006 World Heritage Destinations Rated.   

See all of our Global Eye photos, or add yours to the mix by joining our Flickr pool.

Our dear assistant art director Stefan Caiafa is currently on an overland trip throughout Southeast Asia. But his travels were put on hold in Cambodia for several days as the recent political unrest swirled in Bangkok, where protesters have just ended their week-long blockade of the area airports. Fortunately, Stefan made the most of his ample time there by providing us with an outline of how to find sustainable ways to travel in the environmentally precarious region. We got word from him that he's already on the move, and we were glad to hear that the standoff is over, meaning more than 300,000 stranded travelers will be able to fly home.

Five Sustainable Travel Tips to Angkor, Siem Reap, & Environs

Tip 1. Don't Go!!! Well, not now at least. This is serious advice, as there are a few reasons why travels to Angkor and Siem Reap should be postponed, not the least being the sheer volume of tourism taking its toll on the sites:

Angkor Complex - Several foreign governments (including those of France, Italy, South Korea, India) are contributing funds and personnel towards restoration and conservation efforts within this World Heritage site. This does mean that several important temples, including Angkor Wat, have light scaffolding and closed-off sections. Some of these initiatives are due for completion in 2010 at the earliest. While the temples are still utterly impressive, a visit might be more so once several of these projects have been completed. The upside for those traveling now involves viewing first-hand as workers repair parts of the important temples, and scientists document the bas-reliefs for assessment (a plus for conservation enthusiasts like IT readers). The downside for visiting Angkor Wat currently: the central section, which includes the five iconic towers, remains closed to visitors and has scaffolding on one side. Also, the main draw, "Churning of the Sea of Milk" bas-relief, has parts of it undergoing restoration, which are closed off to the public.

Siem Reap - This is Cambodia's hub town for visiting the Angkor complex, which lies only a few miles north. Siem Reap is a rather sleepy town, though future development is palpable: Several large-scale hotels and resorts are currently being built, making the streets a tangle of tourist buses, motorbikes, and construction crews. Unfortunately, these new, mostly self-contained resorts verge on the generic, offering few opportunities for exploring authentic Cambodia. Siem Reap is, in effect, on path towards becoming a town of Club Meds. Visitors might at the very least wish to wait for the dust to settle before venturing here.

The Washington Post ran an interesting essay in their Outlook section a few weekends ago about a problem that we know well: Global tourism and its negative impact on the places we visit. Under the title "Don't Go There," writer Elizabeth Becker makes a strong case for why sustainable travel is so important, and interviews National Geographic's Jonathan Tourtellot, director of the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations, in the process. She writes:

The places we love are rapidly disappearing. Global tourism today is not only a major industry—it's nothing short of a planet-threatening plague. It's polluting land and sea, destroying wildlife and natural habitat and depleting energy and natural resources. From Asia to Africa, look-alike resorts and spas are replacing and undermining local culture, and the international quest for vacation houses is forcing local residents out of their homes. It's giving rise to official corruption, wealth inequities and heedless competition. It's even contributing to human rights violations, especially through the scourge of sex tourism.

Becker has been writing a book about how journalists cover the tourism industry, and some of her stats are well worth the read. And, in nod to us here at NG, she mentioned National Geographic Traveler's annual Places Rated issue, and our Center for Sustainable Destinations as great resources on how to travel better.

Julia Ross of World Hum reported on Becker's op-ed, and included a mention of Traveler. In it, she asked:

Setting aside the innumerable benefits of foreign travel we take on faith at World Hum, is Becker unduly alarmist? I don’t think so. A $7 trillion global industry that accounts for 8 percent of all the jobs in the world deserves critical attention—something I haven’t seen much of in U.S. media, with the exception of a few venues like National Geographic Traveler.

So we ask our readers: do you think the media has been remiss in reporting on the negative impact of the travel industry?  Do you think things really are as bad as Becker says? 

Photo: A monk at Angkor Wat, one of the sites threatened by global tourism. By Jay Burleson, via the Intelligent Travel Flickr pool.

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Anyone who has traveled to Angkor Wat (pictured, above) knows that there's something missing from the ninth-century Buddhist temple—Buddhas. While the UNESCO complex, which includes Angkor Wat and the Bayon Temple, is no doubt an archaeological wonder, tourists complain the site lacks artifacts. Throughout the centuries, artifacts were taken from Angkor—the once-capital city—by the French (Cambodia's former ruler) and displayed in museums overseas. Eventually some of the artifacts returned to Southeast Asia, but they are located in Cambodia's National Museum, over 185 miles south in Phnom Penh.

Last October, a Thai company tried to bring artifacts back to the temple, by opening the Angkor National Museum just a few miles from the Angkor Archaeological Park. The $15-million museum borrows Angkor artifacts (including some 1,000 Buddhas) from the National Museum, as well as others. A good solution? Not everyone thinks so. Many believe that Thailand, once a ruler of Cambodia, has bigger plans than just opening the museum. Others complain about the museum's history and aesthetics—it has hundreds of Buddhas that date back no further than the 20th century, and it's designed by a Bangkok-based company (Vilailuck International Holdings), and includes a large retail area.

In just a few weeks, Rainer Jenss and his family will begin their year-long around-the-world journey (which they'll be blogging about here on IT). The questions he's most often asked: How exactly do you actually plan such a trip? Here, Rainer gives us some of the lessons he's learned so far, and explains what, exactly is an ARUNK.

Designing an itinerary for an around-the-world trip for someone with wanderlust is like sending a kid into the proverbial candy store. Planet Earth has a ton of variety to choose from. You just can’t have too much too fast, or you might get a bellyache. 

Step One: Find an airline network that suites your needs. We chose the Star Alliance program because it covers most of the destinations we are interested in and  allows us to backtrack if need be (some programs require you to travel in one direction only, east or west). The rules are a bit challenging, but basically we need to start and end in the same country, travel for up to a maximum of one year, not exceed 39,000 miles, and fly no more than 16 segments. But here’s the catch: We have to be very mindful of the cities we select because if we don’t fly in and out of the same one, the miles between them go toward the 39,000 and count as a segment. For example, we want to enter China via Beijing and depart from Shanghai. But even though we don’t plan to actually fly from Beijing to Shanghai, the miles are added to the trip’s ‘odometer’ and a valuable segment (known as an ARUNK, or Arrival Unknown) is eaten up. This is a particularly important consideration, for if you take too many ARUNKS, it can limit the total number of destinations we can actually include in an itinerary.

[UPDATE: The AP has a story that looks not only at the issues facing the temples at Angkor Wat, but the monks who reside in the area as well. The author quotes a local prince about the influx of tourists: "For many tourists, coming to Luang Prabang is like going on safari, but our monks are not monkeys or buffaloes."]

Renovation workers warn that water table damage in Angkor Wat could enable the temples to slowly sink

After long years of internal strife at the hands of the militant group the Khmer Rouge, tourism to Cambodia is now booming, with over 2 million visitors arriving last year. But, as we have noted before, a sudden influx of tourists can been a mixed blessing, especially when the necessary oversight is not in place to help stem the surge.

So a recent piece in the Independent did little to assuage our fears for the region. Writer Rob Sharp described the slew of problems facing Angkor Wat, the massive, intricately-carved sandstone temples which are a World Heritage Site, and are now on every tourists' must-see list. Sharp writes:

According to heritage experts carrying out restoration work at the temple, which is one of the biggest sets of religious ruins in the world, a plethora of new hotels, cashing in on the country's near-exponential rise in tourist numbers, is sapping gallons of water from beneath nearby urban areas. They say this could upset the delicate foundations on which Angkor Wat sits and could lead to parts of it—including its famous celestial apsara, or carved nymphs—taking an unheavenly tumble to earth.