Author Identifier (ORCID)
Brenton Rossow: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8284-1390
Abstract
An eight-legged dark tourist with a freshly starched pith helmet, Sydney’s travels in Cambodia take him to the small town of Skuon, where people snack on fried tarantulas. The trip to Skuon, however, becomes more than just a tropical dark tourist tick box; instead, transforming into a sweaty pilgrimage into the crevices of Sydney’s ravaged psyche. During Syd’s journey, he must embrace his fears and ingest the beast within or forever wallow in the purgatory of his shadow self and its eternal torments. Caught in a web of vampiric arachnids, he must be careful not to become prey, tempted by the sordid touristic pleasures of the war-torn Kingdom. This travelogue, of the psyche and Cambodia, influenced by the genre of magical realism, is accompanied by images generated by Canva AI.
Keywords
Magical realism, travelogue, dark tourism, Skuon Cambodia, fried tarantulas, Canva AI image generation, tropical tourism
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
3-4-2026
Volume
25
Issue
1
Publication Title
ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics
Publisher
James Cook University
School
School of Arts and Humanities
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
First Page
41
Last Page
60
Comments
Rossow, B. (2026). Ascendant in Scorpio: Dark tourism in the kingdom of Cambodia, a travelogue. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 25(1), 41–60.