Word: wat
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...from Queens, N.Y., has broken more than 200 records. He notched his first in 1979 by doing more than 27,000 jumping jacks, and has since hop-scotched the globe in search of new marks, tacking on records for rope-skipping (on a pogo stick) at Cambodia's Angkor Wat, hula-hooping at Australia's Ayers Rock, and traveling the entire 12-mile length of Paul Revere's Massachusetts ride in forward rolls. "I'm trying to show others that our human capacity is unlimited if we can truly believe in ourselves," Furman wrote...
...border dispute erupted in July after UNESCO awarded world-heritage status to the 900-year-old temple. It was built by ancient Khmers, the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia, who also constructed the famous Angkor Wat complex. Although the U.N. agency accepted Cambodia's sole claim of the site, Thailand believes that a stretch of land that is used to access the temple is rightfully its own. In 1962 the International Court of Justice ruled that the temple was in Cambodian territory, but it sidestepped the issue of the access route. For weeks in July and August, hundreds of soldiers...
...already vowed to make the Preah Vihar region a "death zone" if the Thai army doesn't back down. Given the historic enmities between the Khmer and Siamese empires, threats of violence aren't easily ignored. After all, the modern-day town near the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex is called Siem Reap, which in Khmer means "Siam defeated...
...added another 27 sites to its already burgeoning list of places of "outstanding universal value." Now wooden churches in Slovakia, Weimar-era housing projects in Berlin, and Armenian monasteries in Iran have been granted the same hallowed status as the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, and the Temple of Angkor Wat. And why not? There are plenty of ways to define "a human masterpiece of creative genius," one of the several criteria for inclusion. But now that World Heritage Status has been bestowed on 878 sites, some wonder whether UNESCO has the wherewithal - and the will - to protect its designated sites...
...current hub of south-coast tourism, can't keep up with the rush of tourists. The number of foreign visitors to the city shot up by 50% between 2006 and 2007, and infrastructure, including electricity generation, is overtaxed. In 2007, the local airport reopened to shuttle tourists between Angkor Wat and the coast, only to close months later when a domestic flight went down, killing 22 people on board. It's still closed today. Som Chenda, Sihanoukville's minister of tourism, says the city needs more of everything - more hotel rooms, more restaurants, more hospitality training, more language teachers...