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Now the stone foundations sit in water year round. The moisture percolates up into the sandstone and allows mold and moss to destroy the intricate carvings and eventually the integrity of the structures. The antidote used so far has been to scrub the facades. Since 1986 the Archaeological Survey of India has spent the six-month dry season sprucing up Angkor Wat. A team of 15 Indian specialists supervises more than 300 unskilled Cambodian workers, who scrape the fragile sandstone carvings with brushes and chemicals.
While the bright facade of Angkor Wat is a welcome change from the grim, mold-covered exteriors of the other temples, the procedure is controversial. Says a foreign archaeologist at Angkor: "Initially, the Indians were very careless. Much of the detail in the carving has been lost." But on balance, there is less criticism of the Indian efforts now than a few years ago. Says Pich Keo, director of the National Museum in Phnom Penh: "At least they came here and worked when no one else would come."
Now that the civil war is over, teams from Japan, France and Poland want to begin similar work on other monuments. The most ambitious project would be the restoration by Polish specialists of the Bayon, the last great temple built before the collapse of the Khmer civilization. Most of the temples at Angkor are Hindu, but the Bayon was built as a Buddhist shrine. While Angkor Wat soars, the Bayon suffocates. It is crowded with 54 sandstone towers, each with four carved visages of a complacently smiling future Buddha, or bodhisattva. The faces are probably likenesses of the temple's builder, King Jayavarman VII. The King, whose vigorous rule turned out to be the death rattle of the Angkor civilization, went on perhaps the greatest building spree of all Khmer kings, but the sandstone available by his time was of a much lower quality than that used at Angkor Wat. When first discovered, the Bayon was already so decrepit that archaeologists believed it was one of the earliest temples instead of one of the last.
Although the Polish government has signed an agreement with the Cambodian government to restore the temple, Warsaw is broke. The Poles have asked UNESCO for funds and have been turned down. The organization would like to see such bilateral efforts postponed until the overall environment can be stabilized. Even though there is a general understanding of the need for that approach, donor nations want a temple to restore and claim as their own. "Everyone wants to produce a before-and-after photograph," complains Engelhardt.
It will be hard to raise money for the basic infrastructure work needed. For one thing, potential donors are likely to be put off by the corruption that surrounds Angkor's temples. Angkor Tourism, a provincial organization, charges sightseers $120 a day to visit the site and will take in more than $1 million this year. Yet little, if any, of that money goes to maintenance of the monuments. "What money we get comes from Phnom Penh," says Uong Von, director of the Angkor Conservation Office. This office, with only 72 employees in the Angkor area, must deal not only with environmental degradation but also with thieves who are ready to steal any artifact, including statues carved into the building blocks of the monuments.