A New Dawn for ANGKOR
If you haven’t been to Siem Reap lately — which, given the pandemic, will apply to most people — you wouldn’t recognize the place right now. As I write this, much of the leafy riverside city in northwestern Cambodia looks like a colossal construction site — or a city rebuilding after a natural disaster, depending on how you look at things. Yet while so much has changed, some things, reassuringly, remain the same. This thought occurs to me on the road to Angkor Wat as I rub the goose bumps forming on my arms and pull my windblown hair back into a ponytail. I’d forgotten how crisp the forest air can get at 4 a.m., especially in the breezy carriage of an old-fashioned Cambodian tuk tuk. I chide myself for not bringing a cardigan along for the 20-minute ride.
My photographer husband Terence and I are on our way to take in sunrise at the country’s star attraction, just as we’ve been privileged to do scores of times since 2013, when we made Siem Reap our base from which to bounce around Asia for work. Only this time is different: we will have Angkor Wat pretty much to ourselves. The sun will rise behind the majestic 12th-century temple without the
