Tourists run through Angkor Wat to recreate a video game for TikTok videos

“It’s not just potential damage to the stones from people bumping into them and falling or knocking things over — which is real,” conservation consultant Simon Warrack told Bloomberg, “but it’s also a deterioration of the spiritual value and cultural temples”.

“Tourists have been fooling around at Angkor for years,” Alison Carter, a professor of archeology at the University of Oregon who specializes in Southeast Asia, told Business Insider via email — though she noted that she was not familiar with the last viral wave.

In April, for example, authorities said YouTubers were abusing monkeys at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Angkor.

“People often forget that Angkor Wat and other Angkorian temple sites are places of living cultural heritage for the Cambodian people,” Carter said. “If one would not do something in a church or a mosque, one should not do it in an Angkorian temple.”

Andy Brouwer, a film producer and research consultant in the region, agreed.

“I can’t believe the temple authorities didn’t put an end to it immediately,” Brouwer told BI, adding that “allowing brain-dead idiots to run around the temple jumping up and down is a combined accident and disaster that waiting to happen. .”

That said, not everyone is against it. Bloomberg reports that some Cambodians on social media said a possible trend could be a boon for tourism, which has slumped in the wake of COVID-19.

Neither Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism nor ASPARA National Authority – which is charged with protecting the archaeological site – immediately responded to BI’s requests for comment.