Angkor temple restorers face financial ruin after French funding ends, but want to finish job
- Expert Cambodian stonemasons forced to halt work on 11th-century Angkorian temple after international funding ends
- Local authority offers them barely half what they previously earned
When the small boat lands on the island, it’s eerily quiet. It isn’t hard to imagine that the air once rang with the sound of hammers on stone, and the shouts of workers, but now the only sound is the snap of tattered tarpaulins being whipped by the breeze.
The sole sign of activity is an elderly security guard – bare-chested and dappled with tattoos – and his dog.
On the island, at the midst of a vast reservoir, sits West Mebon, an 11th-century Angkorian temple that, until this February, was being revived after more than 1,000 years in a “largely ruined [state] … engulfed in vegetation”, according to a lonely set of informational placards.
The project to rebuild West Mebon began in 2012 with funding from the French government by way of the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), one of the most prominent players in the long history of restoring and maintaining Cambodia’s Angkorian temples.
Six years on the work is little more than half finished, and extensive portions of the structure are merely piles of rubble. It is unclear when the restoration will be completed; equally unclear is the fate of 126 Cambodians working on the project, who have been left in financial limbo.
