Tourism takes a beating as visitors vanish from Asia's most visited sites

SIEM REAP, Cambodia - As dawn breaks the unmistakable tapered towers of Angkor Wat emerge from the gloom - but for once there are no tourists jostling on its steps to capture Cambodia's most famous sunrise.

Asia's most Instagrammable sites - temples, promenades, shopping streets, museums and mausoleums - are empty, victims of a virus keeping visitors at home.

The usual crowds have evaporated from Sensoji temple in Tokyo to Shanghai's Bund; abandoning the viewpoint at The Peak in Hong Kong and alleviating the pedestrian crush along Sydney Harbour.

Many of the now-vanished visitors are from China - a country whose travelers have completely reshaped the tourist economies of Asia over the last few years, yet where only around 10 percent of the population hold passports.

At the Angkor Wat complex, a 12th century marvel of Khmer architecture whose unique crenellations and reliefs lure millions each year, the high season has brought the lowest number of tourists on record.

Chinese-speaking Cambodian guide Hor Sophea has not taken any tours since late January. Several weeks on, money is getting tight.

"I've never seen so few tourists," said the 36-year, gesturing at the large moat inside the Angkor Wat complex, whose gangways normally bustle with selfie-taking hordes but are now empty.

"I am very worried... I don't know how much longer we can carry on like this."

The Angkor complex in Siem Reap province attracts the bulk of the kingdom's foreign tourists -- which hit a record 6.6 million in 2019, nearly half of whom were from China.

But the outbreak of the coronavirus has withered Chinese tourist arrivals by 90 percent.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has announced tax breaks for hotels and guesthouses in Siem Reap for four months to offset the losses.

But the discovery on Saturday of the first Cambodian with the infection - in Siem Reap - is likely to cement the stay-at-home mentality among many travelers.

The economic impact is also cascading across Asia.

In Bali, piers once bristling with arrivals from China are now decorated with moored boats, while in Tokyo the slump in mainland visitors - as well as South Koreans - is hammering restaurants in tourist areas.

At the Tsukiji fish market, some restaurants say their take is nearly 70 percent down.

"People stopped coming from China during the Lunar New Year... the streets and shops around here are near-empty," Hiroshi Oya, 61, a cook at a Japanese seafood restaurant told AFP.

"Then South Koreans stopped coming too. The tuna shop next to us decided to close temporarily to avoid running costs," he added.

But for those who are inured to the panic gripping the globe and choose to navigate travel restrictions and the morass of quarantine, a rare privilege of empty sites is their reward.

At the Angkor complex, even Ta Prohm -- the 'Tomb Raider Temple' famed for its embrace by giant tree roots and a Hollywood film franchise -- has only a smattering of visitors each day.

"We're very very lucky. Covid-19 has probably done us a favor," Australian tourist Andres Medenis, who came for sunrise at Angkor Wat, told AFP.

"But the economy is going to be really affected by that... so I feel sorry for the local people." 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google launches digital tour of Cambodia's Angkor Wat

ANGKOR WAT -- Cambodia's Angkor Wat has been digitally mapped for the first time, allowing people to visit the World Heritage Site from the comfort of their armchair using Google Street View.

The project is part of a growing trend aimed at Internet users who might otherwise never have the chance to visit the cultural and architectural wonders of the world.

Google took more than a million photos of Angkor -- the result is 90,000 360-degree views of more than 100 temples.

Street View allows web users to zoom in on an area, and then explore.

"Recently we've done the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, Mount Fiji," said Manik Gupta, project manager at Google Maps.

"But the scale of Angkor Wat is what makes this unprecedented," he told AFP at the project's launch on Thursday.

"It is such an iconic place, people say it is the eighth wonder of the world, and it gives you this incredible sense -- look at every single small nook and cranny, you'll find art work."

The Angkor Archaeological Park contains the remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, dating from the 9th to the 15th century.

Cars, trains and trekkers

To create the project Google used a new innovation called "Trekker."

Fifteen digital cameras are attached by a long pole to a backpack, and each one records a 75 million mega pixel photo every two and a half seconds.

By walking around the Angkor Wat temple complex, they are able to photograph areas that Google's Street View cars cannot reach.

"Street View launched in 2007, and since then we've amassed a huge amount of experience. We've even used snow mobiles and trains, and Trekker is the latest tool," Gupta said.

Google Maps was launched in 2005, followed by Street View two years later and more recently Google Art, which provides tours of major galleries and museums.

For the latest project, five local men were tasked with trekking around the temples for up to eight hours a day, to record what many people say is the eighth wonder of the world.

A huge amount of Cambodia's heritage was destroyed during the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s.

"If there is a country where this is needed the most, it is Cambodia," said Amit Sood, Google's director of cultural heritage, which is trying to bring as many international cultural artifacts online as possible.

"There is so much about Cambodia that is not known in the west, because it was erased, but Cambodia has a very rich cultural heritage."

Digitized museums booming

About 4.2 million tourists visited Cambodia last year, a 17 percent increase on 2012, the majority of whom visited the temple complex.

Sood believes that by having Angkor Wat online for people to enjoy, it will encourage more people to come to see the real thing, like with art galleries.

"All digitized museums are experiencing unprecedented growth. Physical attendance is booming," Sood told AFP. "There definitely isn't a negative effect."

But although Google offers a visual digital experience, allowing web users to spot things that would be easily missed by the naked eye, some visitors say that it could ruin the moment you see something for the first time.

"I wouldn't go see it on Google Street View before I went there," 21 year old Dutch backpacker Liesbeth Gerritsen told AFP in the shade of one of the long carved corridors at Angkor Wat.

"For me it is cooler to (come) and see it, and then look it up afterwards."

And travel experts believe nothing can truly replace experiencing something on your own.

"I can't imagine that seeing pictures online or a 360 view as presented by Google Maps would be a real substitute for actually going there," said Tom Sturrock, a Bangkok-based travel editor and writer.

"The online experience is never going to be an adequate replacement for actually being there when the sun comes up at Angkor Wat."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com