TRAVEL | January 22, 2006
Why Is Everybody Going to Cambodia?
By MATT GROSS
Gone is the Khmer Rouge. Today they are such popular tourist attractions that the measure of an expert Angkor guide is not his knowledge of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, nor his mastery of English, French and Japanese, but his ability to show visitors the most popular sites - the Bayon, Phnom Bakheng, Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat itself - and have them wondering, at day's end, "Where was everybody else?"

But not all guides are expert at deftly avoiding the tourist crush. In 2004, international arrivals topped one million for the first time, a figure reached in 2005 by the end of September, according to the Ministry of Tourism.