Thailand should avoid Disneyfication to boost tourism

THE failed attempt of a Thai king to "relocate" the Angkor Wat temple from Cambodia to Thailand in 1859 was obviously brazen. The story does not end there. Some Thais are still claiming the temple built by Cambodian King Suryavarman II in the 12th century.

The ongoing construction in Thailand of an alleged replica of Angkor Wat is generating a diplomatic fuss, and raising other questions - is it a Thai attempt to divert tourism away from Cambodia by building another Angkor? And are the Thais trying to appropriate Cambodian culture to fulfil the dream of their king?

Many Cambodians have criticised it as an attempt to build a second Angkor Wat in the province of Buri Ram in lower north-eastern Thailand. The Cambodians are now studying the extent of the alleged copying.

In July, the Cambodian Embassy in Thailand, in cooperation with Thai officials, began probing the building of the temple. A Cambodian Secretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Koy Kuong, stated that a detailed investigation would be conducted because some temples in Thailand were similar in style to Angkor Wat, such as the existing Phanom Rung temple in Buri Ram.

If the temple being built is found to have copied Angkor Wat's architectural style, Cambodia is expected to use diplomatic means of protest, as Phnom Penh has done in previous cases.

Photographs of the lookalike Angkor Wat in Buri Ram have generated excitement on social media. Almost immediately, the abbot of a temple who is overseeing the construction defended the project against Cambodian allegations of imitation. Abbot Somsak Sungwarajitto has stated that the project emerged from his own vision and rejected the suggestion that it was an Angkor Wat replica.

The construction, consisting of many sandstone stupas and other edifices, began last year on 200 rai (32 hectares) of land which, archaeologists believe, exhibits a combination of many religious sites such as Prasat Hin Phimai in Nakhon Ratchasima and Phanom Rung in Buri Ram (both in Thailand), and Borobudur in Central Java, Indonesia.

The construction of an Angkor-like temple, on the face of it, appears to be an effort by Buri Ram to compete with Angkor for tourism. But the distance between them is huge - Angkor is a much bigger tourist attraction - which makes Buri Ram's task of catching up almost impossible.

The number of tourists to Buri Ram rose from more than 230,000 in 2009 to 960,000 in 2014, according to the Thai Department of Tourism, most of them visiting the 10th century ruins of Phanom Rung, which was a part of the mighty Khmer Empire, the precursor to the present day Cambodian kingdom.

In contrast, many more tourists visit Siem Reap, the gateway city to Angkor, with 2.59 million foreign visitor arrivals in 2018, representing more than 38 per cent of the country's international tourism. The boom occurred when Angkor became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1992 and with the return of political stability after the civil war.

Healthy rivalry is not a bad thing if it does not get out of control, but it often does. In January 2003, the hugely popular Thai actress Suvanant Kongying had allegedly claimed - in a report in a Cambodian newspaper - that Cambodia had "stolen" Angkor Wat which had belonged to Thailand.

Riots broke out in Phnom Penh when other Cambodian print and radio media picked up the report which fanned nationalistic flames, resulting in the burning of the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh and some Thai businesses. Soon afterwards, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen repeated the allegations, saying that Suvanant was "not worth a few blades of grass near the temple", and the Cambodian government then banned all Thai television programmes in the country.

CONTROVERSY ONCE MORE

From time to time, controversy goes back on the boil. In September 2018, Thailand's Khaosod newspaper revived memory in the minds of Thai readers of a bizarre and ambitious plot to steal the temple of Ta Prohm, one of the structures within the Angkor Wat complex. The newspaper stated that the plot was hatched by Thai King Rama IV in 1859, a year before French explorer Henri Mouhot's expedition to Angkor brought it to the world's attention. Under the plan, Siamese troops were to travel to Angkor and disassemble parts of the site, and then rebuild it at Wat Pathum, which now occupies a space between two major shopping malls in Bangkok's Siam area.

The plot did not end there. Another fake Angkor Wat was also to be reassembled in Phetchaburi province, where the Thai king had built a palace on a mountain. Thai historians explain the Thai king's motive by arguing that Cambodian and Thai cultures were deeply intertwined, and that the Thai monarchy identifies itself as having descended from the once-powerful Khmer Empire.

Unfortunately for King Rama IV - and fortunately for Cambodia - the plan to dismantle Angkor failed when the Thai expedition was ambushed by Cambodians. Undeterred, King Rama IV tried to launch another expedition, but his advisors dissuaded him, arguing that the task of relocating the structure to Thailand was very difficult.

By way of a consolation, King Rama IV built a miniature Angkor Wat inside the Emerald Buddha Temple in Bangkok, but the monarch did not get to see it as he died in 1868, a year before it was completed. The tendency for Thai kings to cast a covetous eye on Angkor ended when French forces invaded and seized Cambodia as its protectorate just before the turn of the 20th century.

Rivalry between Thailand and Cambodia extended to the Preah Vihear temple that both countries had claimed for more than a century. This ancient Cambodian temple, built during the period of the Khmer Empire, is located in the Preah Vihear province of Cambodia. The dispute was eventually settled in November 2013 when the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that Cambodia should have sovereignty over most of the disputed land around the Preah Vihear temple near the border with Thailand. The court ordered Thailand to withdraw troops from around the hilltop temple.

While giving some joy to Cambodia, the court did not give the country all the disputed land, saying it had no jurisdiction over the surrounding land. The ruling was welcomed by both governments and the Thai prime minister urged Thais to accept the verdict. There was relief in Phnom Penh as the ruling ended a long-standing rift that had previously led to clashes between the armies of the two countries. The 2013 verdict followed a 1962 decision by the court which had declared the temple to be Cambodian but stopped short of ruling on the area around it.

If the Thais resort to the Disneyfication of Angkor in order to boost tourism in Buri Ram, the plan may backfire because tourists would rather visit the real temple in Cambodia.

• The writer is the editor-in-chief of Rising Asia Journal.