Siem Reap is located up north of Cambodia. It is the second largest city after Phnom Penh, stretched from west to east along national road 6 roughly 10 Kilometers and approximately 4 kilometers from north to south along Siem Reap River, population nearly one million people. The town serves as the gateway to the millennium_old temple ruins of the Angkorian_era Khmer Empire.
Siem Reap
Siem Reap is located up north of Cambodia. It is the second largest city after Phnom Penh, stretched from west to east along national road 6 roughly 10 Kilometers and approximately 4 kilometers from north to south along Siem Reap River, population nearly one million people. The town serves as the gateway to the millennium_old temple ruins of the Angkorian_era Khmer Empire.
The name of the provincial town Siem Reap has been called from the 16 th century in the reigned of king Angchan; Siem is derived from the word Siames and Reap Cambodian literally means defeated. It’s called so because in (1555-1556) the King with his field marshal led commanders and a lot of soldiers from Luong Vek capital Kompong chhnang province to dispel the invaders away from Angkor area. In order to drive the enemies back the field harshal with his family devoted their lives by jumping down into the deep pound that already set sharp spears in its bottom to kill themselves to go down the hell to conscript the ghost armies to help the king. After three days await, they saw so many adversaries death by stomachache .
Angkor Thom compound covered an area of nine square kilometers, Angkor Thom means big holly capital, had been the royal palace of the Khmer Empire from 889 by the King YasovarmanI, after he successed the Throne from his father he moved the royal palace from Hariharalaya 13 kilometers east of central town . This royal palace named Yasodharapura and located in the middle of the compound; in 1431 as Cambodia declined, politics instable, economics crisis, internal conflictions and the enemies always invade to grab the land, the capital used to be the mid spot of the kingdom was not the center any more, therefore the King Ponheayat eventually abandoned this area moved down to the south to find another exquisite area to settle a new capital that far from the border for safety, when the king abandoned most citizens accompanied him and the rest were killed and evacuated to Thailand, Cambodian then seem forgot about the stone temples that they left, and all of structures had been destroyed, covered in the jungle. In that interval there were many kings crowned the throne one after other and each king constructed their own temples to dedicated to the gods of the religion they believed and water reservoirs for their farmers throughout the country such as Angkor Wat temple, the largest religious movement in the world; Angkor Thom consists dozen clusters of temple including the master piece of the Buddhist architecture, Bayon with its giant faces, the famous south gate topped by 4 faces and cause way lined by demons and gods holding a large dragon Vasoki, model of churning of milk ocean to create holy water called Amrita, form of tuck of war; Taphromtemple served as a Buddhist monastery, housed most of gold Buddha statues; Banteay Srei Temple is a precious gem and a jewel in Khmer art, because of its incomparable beauty of sculpture and decoration in pink stone and more immense temples are inheritances from those Kings, moreover, some of water reservoirs especially the western Barays have been being used to irrigate rice fields since the Angkor era. All of these achievements show about the vivid Khmer art, prosperity, splendor and coalescence between king, religion and citizen.
After hundreds of year over grown in jungle, the temples found by accident, Mr. Henri, a French man hunting in the jungle and encountered tiger fleeing from the chasing tiger he found the massive temple of Bayon. He felt like in earthly paradise and he began to interest in Cambodia, wrote to describe about this old civilization country which used to be a strong Empire and he said while he drawing picture of Bayon temple all the big faces on towers seem staring at him and he felt scary. Then he sent his books to Europe, the tourist started to come to visit Cambodia, at the same time ministry of tourism has been established to meet the tourist needs. The restoration and conservation project have worked hard on the site that supported by some foreign countries and Apsara authority. In 1997 Angkor Wat has been registered as the world heritage and now Cambodia has been expanding its potential to the world on tourism.
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