After several incidents in which tourists bared it all among the ruins of Angkor Wat, the Cambodian agency responsible for the Unesco World Heritage site is putting the final touches on a visitor “code of conduct.”
The Phnom Penh Post reported Monday that the Apsara Authority, which runs the Angkor Archaeological Park next month will send its draft rules to the International Criminal Court to review their legality.
But Sok Sangvar, head of Apsara's tourism-management group, said most the rules are common sense: Keep your clothes on and don't touch the artefacts.
This year has been an embarrassing one for the authority, which has endured several incidents of tourists and models taking nude photographs among the Angkor monuments.
Racy photos depicting a topless Apsara dancer reclining amid Angkorian ruins went viral on Facebook in late January. The photos turned out to be the work of a Chinese company.
A week later, three male French tourists were arrested after they were caught taking naked photos at the Banteay Kdei temple inside the park. A week after that, Cambodia deported two American sisters for taking photos of each other's bare buttocks there.
Two of the photos posted to Facebook by a Chinese group calling itself Wanimal. The pictures were the first in a flurry of naked photos taken at Angkor Wat this year. (Wanimal Facebook page)
And on Feb 11 began investigating an online photo by a 25-year-old German photographer. Captioned "Hakuna Matata" ("no worries"), it depicted a couple naked at the ancient temple, posing with monkey masks.
Officials with the Angkor Tourism Management Plan working group insist, however, that the code of conduct was not inspired by this year's nude-photo spree. The plan, in fact, has been in the works since December 2013 when the group was founded.
The panel was set up by the Apsara Authority, Unesco and the Cambodian and Australian governments in response to concerns about the growing numbers of tourists -- more than 2 million a year -- visiting Angkor Wat.
Under study by the working group is damage to monuments, environmental degradation, littering, traffic congestion, degraded pathways, visitor behaviour and a lack in benefit-sharing with nearby residents.
When finalised, the code of conduct will be distributed in book form to tour guides, agencies, hotels, and others in the tourism industry, an Apsara spokesman told the Post. If successful, it will be applied to other sites in the kingdom.