ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together a number of arguments presented in earlier chapters via a detailed analysis of two temple complexes: Ta Prohm and Preah Khan. Through their preservation as ‘partial ruins’ these two sites have become popular icons for the Angkor complex as a whole. Examining them as spaces of tourism and heritage reveals the uneasy convergence of various competing value regimes. The chapter begins with ‘Ruins in history: romance and nostalgia’, which explores a series of representations, narratives, and practices within the context of international tourism. The dominant themes reproduced in guidebooks, travel literature or documentaries are situated alongside the spatial practices of tourists. It will be seen that a sense of meaningful place, oriented around nostalgic visions of nineteenth-century European adventure and discovery, emerges from the interplay between various discursive representations and the embodied experience of clambering over tree routes and fallen stones.
