Dark tourism in Southeast Asia: where to go and what to avoid

Insensitive, grinning selfies being snapped in front of torture tools, visitors pocketing fragments of bones and Pokemon Go players storming a genocide museum are among the reports of disrespectful behaviour at sites serving as memorials to the estimated two million people who died under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

“We have seen a definite growth in the role of dark tourism,” says travel industry expert Carolyn Childs, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com, referring to a global appetite for travel to destinations scarred by death and suffering. “There is no doubt a proportion of travellers are either ‘tick list’ travellers or whose interest has darker motivations.”

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As travel becomes more accessible, and the trend of sharing experiences via social media more widespread, the question is: do such macabre experiences play a role in educating and atoning, or are they simply becoming vulgar and voyeuristic attractions?

In Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, author and war correspondent who covered Cambodia throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Elizabeth Becker accuses the country’s dark tourism industry of being exploitive and disrespectful to those who died, and those who survived.

However, today she concedes that sites can be either educational or exploitative – depending on their purpose, how they are curated and how true they are to the history of the site. “Sites that memorialise the darkest of evil deeds are necessary, if for no other reason to ensure they are not forgotten or the history rewritten,” she says , adding that they should avoid commercialisation. “The best are those that show utmost respect for the victims by putting their stories at the centre.”

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