Words by Warren Singh-Bartlett
Photographs by Christopher Wise
November 6, 2026

As conservation work and excavations continue at Angkor and beyond, the history of ancient Cambodia is still being written—revealing an even richer landscape than once imagined.

*Left to right:* Prasat Damrei Krap, a ninth-century temple on Phnom Kulen; a guide at Koh Ker.

The conference hall in Siem Reap was standing room only. Television cameras were trained on a low stage as international delegates, NGO representatives, and Cambodian officials took their seats. A small group of Asia-based travel journalists stood at the back, looking as though we had taken a wrong turn on our way to breakfast.

We hadn’t, of course. We were there to witness the graduation of 41 Cambodian heritage professionals from a six-month training program developed by the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the APSARA National Authority, the government agency responsible for managing nearby Angkor Archaeological Park. Supported by the Park Hyatt Siem Reap, the initiative provides local foremen with advanced training in masonry, site management, and conservation, helping ensure that responsibility for preserving Angkor, the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire, increasingly rests with Cambodian specialists.

Speeches were made in Khmer and English. A US$250,000 restoration grant was announced. Then the lights dimmed and the graduates filed onstage for certificates, handshakes, and photographs. The ceremony was over faster than I expected, but that did not diminish its significance. For the graduates, many of whom live in villages scattered across the park and had learned their craft on scaffolding and in stone yards beneath the tropical sun, it was formal recognition that experience had become expertise.

“If you’ve got a monument and you need to come back and maintain it, you need to have the people who can do that,” Jeff Allen, WMF’s senior regional director for Southeast Asia, had told us the previous evening. Describing himself as an “ambulance chaser” for heritage, he’d spoken at length about the importance of twinning social development with conservation. “You need to invest in local people and their ability to take care of their own monuments and cultural identity.”

The Park Hyatt Siem Reap, an elegant blend of art deco and Khmer design in the center of town, helped fund the training. During my stay in June, the hotel was also testing small WMF-led visits to active conservation sites. Clad in hard hats, guests got to meet the workers and discover how much effort it takes to keep centuries-old monuments standing.

It’s easy to think the preservation of Angkor’s temples is complete. First systematically conserved by French archaeologists after the jungle-shrouded site’s “rediscovery” in the 1860s by naturalist Henri Mouhot, who called it “grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome,” Angkor was designated a World Heritage Site in 1992, ushering in one of the world’s most ambitious conservation efforts.

In reality, the job never ends. Stones shift, rain penetrates masonry, roots insinuate themselves into joints, and yesterday’s miracle fix can become tomorrow’s botch job, as with Paraloid B-72, an acrylic resin once hailed as a conservator’s cure-all before its use at Angkor was found to yellow and trap moisture within the ancient stonework.

Sites fall apart, Allen said. The job is to manage the decay.

At Phnom Bakheng, the hilltop temple favored by sunset crowds, the WMF’s work was visible from the ground up. Fallen blocks discarded during earlier conservation campaigns lay behind a timber barrier, waiting to be returned, where possible, to their original positions. Higher up, new sandstone insertions designed to stabilize crumbling corners had already darkened so completely in the relentless tropical climate that only a practiced eye could distinguish them from the original stone. A panel of before-and-after photographs proved invaluable in this regard. As WMF regional representative Ginevra Boatto explained, successful restoration often leaves visitors wondering what, if anything, has been done—which is reason enough to give prospective donors a look behind the scenes.

An apsara carving at the 12th-century temple of Preah Khan, one of the Angkor sites conserved by the World Monuments Fund; the seven-tiered pyramid of Prasat Thom at Koh Ker. — *Left to right:* An *apsara* carving at the 12th-century temple of Preah Khan, one of the Angkor sites conserved by the World Monuments Fund; the seven-tiered pyramid of Prasat Thom at Koh Ker.

I had last visited Siem Reap in 2000, when Cambodia received fewer than half a million international visitors. Now, I couldn’t even find the street where I’d stayed. Partly, this was because my memory, unlike Angkor’s bas-reliefs, is not etched in stone. But it was also because the city had expanded beyond recognition. Roads were wider, drains had been dug, and the old low-rise town center had filled out with boutique hotels, cafés, restaurants, and stylish shops.

Much of this happened during the pandemic. International arrivals to Cambodia fell from 6.6 million in 2019 to fewer than 200,000 in 2021. The pause allowed Siem Reap to upgrade its infrastructure and public spaces, work that would have been far more difficult amid the usual bustle of pedestrians, tuk-tuks, and tour coaches.

But it isn’t only Siem Reap that has changed since my first visit. The way Angkor itself is understood has evolved. The archaeological park stretches across some 400 square kilometers, encompassing about 100 major temples, reservoirs, canals, and palaces. It is also a living landscape of forests, rice fields, and 112 villages that are home to more than 100,000 people. Yet the story extends beyond the park’s official boundaries. Remote sensing and targeted fieldwork have helped researchers identify Greater Angkor, a vast urban complex that served as the successive capitals of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to 15th centuries. Extending across at least 1,000 square kilometers, it is now considered the world’s most extensive preindustrial city, supporting as many as a million people.

Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan encountered Angkor at its height in 1296, chronicling its markets, houses, dress, royal processions, and all the untidy business of daily life between the monuments. Portuguese and Japanese visitors followed in later centuries after the Khmer royal court moved south toward present-day Phnom Penh, but Angkor—particularly its centerpiece, Angkor Wat—remained a Buddhist sanctuary even as the city crumbled.

Unlike the temples, secular Khmer buildings were made from wood and other perishable materials and have long since vanished. New techniques have been key to revealing their foot- print. Where archaeologists once focused on inscriptions and monumental architecture, aerial lidar surveys—using laser pulses that filter through gaps in the forest canopy to map the ground—have revealed embankments, house mounds, ponds, road grids, and hydraulic works invisible from ground level.

The more archaeologists uncover, the less Angkor resembles an isolated city. Instead, it emerges as the heart of a much wider Khmer world.

*Left to right:* Monks at the Bayon; the giant reclining Buddha at Phnom Kulen’s Preah Ang Thom monastery.

Most visitors never stray beyond the main cluster of Angkorian temples, yet those who venture farther are amply rewarded. After a week in Siem Reap, I headed to Koh Ker, Phnom Kulen, and the largely unrestored Beng Mealea, where wooden walkways cross a Lego-like tumble of masonry that hints at how many temples looked before they were cleared, with more than a hint of Indiana Jones.

The Khmer Empire once controlled or influenced large parts of present-day Thailand, Laos, and southern Vietnam. Koh Ker, a two-hour drive northeast of Siem Reap, testifies to that reach. For 16 years in the 10th century, it replaced Angkor as the imperial capital. At the heart of the site, the seven-tiered pyramid of Prasat Thom rises abruptly from the forest, part Mesopotamian ziggurat, part jungle citadel, amid sanctuaries built during an extraordinary burst of construction under Jayavarman IV.

From the pyramid’s summit, an unbroken canopy of forest stretched toward distant hills crowned by temples. After hearing how much I’d enjoyed the view, my driver, Vibol, offered a rather less nuanced interpretation of that past. Referring to the Khmer lands beyond Cambodia’s borders as “stolen” territories, he told me on the drive back that if the Cambodian government were a “good one,” it would demand their return. Medieval Khmer authority certainly extended across much of mainland Southeast Asia, but the empire exercised power through tributary relationships and shifting alliances rather than fixed borders or modern notions of sovereignty. I thought about mentioning this, but as Vibol had a firm grip on both the steering wheel and historical grievance, I chose discretion as the better part of valor.

If the empire’s hegemony was fluid at its edges, the engineered landscape at its heart was more solid. Angkor’s extraordinary scale was made possible by Khmer mastery of water, whose legacy remains in the reservoirs, canals, dikes, bridges, and spillways spread across the countryside, some still in use.

The Khmer were sophisticated hydrologists, and harnessing a climate that oscillates between monsoon deluge and months of drought was key to their success. The moats and reservoirs, now popular spots for sunrise selfies, did far more than provide protection and water. The immense weight of the temples rested on engineered layers of sand that remained stable as long as moisture levels were maintained. When moats dried or groundwater levels shifted, those foundations could become unstable.

Drawing on Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, the ancient Khmer saw temple towers as the peaks of Mount Meru, the mountain at the center of the universe, while the moats surrounding them represented the cosmic ocean. This gave generations of custodians a sacred reason not to let the water disappear. Cosmology doubling as an engineering manual.

A sandstone cliff on the Phnom Kulen plateau.

*Left to right:* Sacred tattoos on the back of a Buddhist monk; picnickers beside the River of a Thousand Lingas.

The source of much of that water is Phnom Kulen, the forested plateau northeast of Angkor where Jayavarman II is traditionally believed to have founded the Khmer Empire in 802. On my first visit to Siem Reap all those years ago, when mine clearance in the surrounding countryside was still underway, the journey there required more optimism than I possessed. Now, it’s a two-hour drive through villages, cashew plantations, and thinning forests.

Most visitors come to Phnom Kulen for three attractions: a 16th-century Buddhist monastery, a waterfall, and the River of a Thousand Lingas, a stretch of sandstone riverbed etched with hundreds of lingas, the phallic representations of the Hindu god Shiva. The carvings ritually sanctified water that was already regarded as sacred before it flowed toward the moats and reservoirs of the ancient cities below. But the plateau’s real treasures lie deeper in the jungle: Mahendraparvata, the first capital of the Khmer Empire.

Predating Angkor Wat by more than 300 years, Mahendraparvata had long been known to archaeologists. But the city’s full extent only became clear through the work of the Archaeology and Development Foundation (ADF), which began large-scale excavations of the overgrown site in 2008. Within a few years, lidar surveys revealed a dense urban landscape covering some 40 to 50 square kilometers, with temples, a royal palace, unfinished reservoirs, brick towers, and earthen dams arranged on a rectilinear grid.

A morning at Mahendraparvata makes clear that archaeology and conservation cannot be separated from the lives of the people who live on the plateau. Forest clearance and expanding cashew cultivation continue to threaten the watershed, placing both the ruins and local communities at risk. In response, the ADF has spearheaded local initiatives such as the Anlong Thom Tourism Center, which melds archaeological research with agroecology, handicrafts, and community-led walking tours to collapsed brick sanctuaries and isolated hermitages as a way to provide alternative, sustainable sources of income.

The circuits are fairly lengthy, and under other circumstances I would have walked. The forest was magical, filled with birdsong and more shades of green than I thought possible, while fleeting glimpses through the trees to the plains below were breathtaking. But the day was hot and sticky, and I wanted to cover as much ground as possible. So instead, Heng “Srel” Puthea, my guide from Anlong Thom, put me on the back of a motorbike, and off we went. The ride took us through orchards and thick forest along bumpy tracks that occasionally zigzagged across sheets of exposed rock, which surely become waterslides when it rains. Thankfully, we didn’t find out.

Ancient animal sculptures at Srah Damrei, Phnom Kulen.

*Left to right:* A trail on Phnom Kulen; an attendant at Koh Ker.

Over the next five hours, Srel introduced me to the other side of Angkor: crumbling temples, partially excavated step pyramids, and magnificent rock-cut statues draped in vines and lichen. He pointed out birds, plants, wild beehives, giant spiders, and, most memorably, a bright green pit viper basking on a mossy rock carving beside a natural spring. By the time we stopped for a riverside picnic back at Anlong Thom, I’d learned as much about the hardships of life on the plateau as I had about the legends Srel grew up with and the deep connection he felt to the landscape around him.

This, in another way, was what the ceremony in Siem Reap had been about. Not some showy handover from foreigners to Cambodians, because Cambodian expertise has long been fundamental to Angkor’s survival, nor some patronizing transfiguration of laborers into guardians. What was going on here was something more uplifting: local people being recognized for the expertise they embody, people with a personal interest in the long-term survival of their monuments, their environment, and their cultural heritage.

Angkor’s appeal is often conveyed through snapshots in time: stone towers rising from a sea of trees, the Bayon’s inscrutable faces, banyan roots frozen mid-assault on Ta Prohm. What this visit taught me, however, was that its enduring significance lies in the fact that it has always been a living landscape.

Even in ruin, Angkor Wat remained a place of worship, while Greater Angkor continued to be inhabited, cultivated, and remembered. The country’s long civil war shattered institutions and interrupted the transmission of specialist knowledge, but it did not erase Cambodia’s relationship with its past. Now the expertise needed to conserve it is being strengthened, formally acknowledged, and passed to a new generation.

A view of UNESCO-listed Angkor Wat in Cambodia. — Angkor Wat is the centerpiece of an expansive archaeological park that drew over 950,000 foreign tourists in 2025.

Siem Reap Stays

Park Hyatt Siem Reap
This sophisticated retreat in the center of town blends modern Cambodian design with the understated luxury expected of the brand. Tranquil courtyards, two swimming pools, elegant rooms, and a Khmer-inspired spa provide a welcome respite after a day exploring Angkor (from US$200 a night).

FCC Angkor by Avani
Colonial heritage meets tropical modernism at this cocoon-like hotel in the Old French Quarter. Eighty contemporary rooms, two pools, and a spa sit amid mature gardens, with the Psar Chas market, the Royal Residence, and the riverside promenade all within easy reach (from US$150 a night).

This article originally appeared in the October/November 2026 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Khmer Inheritance”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

Preserving Angkor: Stories Behind the Stones