On 24 July 2025, clashes at the disputed Ta Muen Thom temple on the Cambodia–Thailand border killed over 30 people and displaced around 300,000, with each side blaming the other. Rather than focusing on geopolitical causes, this essay examines how the conflict is experienced in Cambodia, analysing anti-Thai boycotts through Mary Douglas’s concept of symbolic classification and the construction of the “Thai” as an excluded other.