Sunday, November 01, 2026
Week 12: Siem Reap, Cambodia
Siem Reap is Cambodia's 2nd largest city and the main hub for visits to the Angkor Archaeological Park. We honestly spent very little time in the city itself, as our homestay was at the very edge of town, but much closer to the park, which was our main reason for visiting. We got 3-day tickets, 2 of which we used visiting on our homestay's bicycles, and our 3rd via tuk-tuk.
The ruins here are vast - Angkor Wat itself at 1.6 square km, being the largest religious site in the world, and only part of the extensive network of buildings, roads, and waterways that make up the Archeological Park (400 square km) - once the center of the Khmer Empire which reigned from the 9th-15th centuries, once controlled most of Indochina. At it's peak in the 11th-13th centuries, the Angkor region supported 1 million residents (the largest preindustrial urban center in human history) though an incredible hydrologic system of engineered canals, moats, and man-made reservoirs that was able to manage the seasonal fluctuations in water levels, allowing 3 rice harvests a year. By the mid 15th century, though a combination of declining trade, military defeats, droughts, and resulting technical difficulties with the water system, the empire fell, and over 500 or so years the jungle reclaimed the area.
The 9th century Khmer emperors were Hindu, and by the 12th century the rulers were Buddhist, so there is a variety of religious symbology in the construction and decoration of this sites - but while we can now easily identify the ubiquitous Garudas, Nagas, lions, elephants, monkeys, Aspara dancers, and Buddhas, honestly the religious epics which are retold in images on the temple walls were both so detailed and so unfamiliar to us that we found them hard to relate to. Still, the architecture, agriculture, and engineering captured our interest, as did the view of temples swallowed by jungle.
Restoration efforts began in the early 20th century though with a major U-turn during the Khmer Rouge dictatorship. They are underway again and have made huge progress in the past 30 years. We saw many protects in action, some in partnership with India, others with China, and still others with the international nonprofit World Monuments Fund. The park is Cambodia's primary tourist destination, hosting about a million foreign visitors a year (though it was 2-3 million pre pandemic - I'm sure that hurts...).
One thing to be aware of if you visit are the aggressive monkeys that live around the park. They have no fear of people. They feast off the Buddhist offerings when they can, and will pursue any visitors they think have food. I actually had to hit one with my bag to get it to back off!! Kepfram now carries his whistle everywhere, in case!
(Sidenote: Pol Pot's stated goal of an agrarian peasant utopia cultivating 3 rice harvests a year was made impossible, at least in part, by his active destruction of history, learning, and any scholarship which would have allowed this to succeed.)
Our final outing in Siem Reap was to see the Phare Cambodian Circus, begun in the 1980s as a therapeutic arts program to support refugee children recovering from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge, and now continues to supporting underprivileged children in western Cambodia by training them in art, music, acrobatics and dance for 8-10 years before they are ready to perform the big show. We were impressed by the event, and happy to support their work.
Labels: Cambodia
