Jared Cahners, an expatriate who has been living in Cambodia for about 10 years, woke up early. At 6am, he was at Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious monument, to see the day dawn. It is an experience millions of tourists have thronged to Cambodia’s most popular tourist attraction to witness, but on this day, he saw the sun come up over its three towers in almost complete solitude.
“I had been the only foreigner to go to sunrise at Angkor that day,” recalls Cahners, who had asked a park security guard how many international visitors had entered for the dawn viewing.
“There was empty space in all directions,” Cahners says of the day in early April.
