Place
Siem Reap
សៀមរាប
Siem Reap (សៀមរាប) is a city in northwestern Cambodia and the town nearest the temples of Angkor. It shares its name with the province around it and with the river that runs through its center.[1][2] In the city, a road of about 5 kilometers on the south side of Angkor Wat bears the name of Charles de Gaulle, who visited Angkor in 1966.[3]
Name
In Khmer, Siem refers to Siam, the country now called Thailand, and reap means defeated.[1] A history professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh told Radio Free Asia that armies of the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya attacked the Angkor region many times from the 14th century. In the 15th or 16th century, he said, King Ang Chan fought to drive them out. The name, he said, was given after that Khmer victory.[1] A short history of Cambodia by Nuon Sothimon dates the battle to 1525, and says King Ang Chan I named the place Siem Reap afterward.[1] Long before, in the 9th and 10th centuries, the area held the royal city of Yasodharapura, built by King Yasovarman I.[1]
The Siem Reap River
The Siem Reap River is one of four streams that run down from Phnom Kulen, with the Puok to the west and the Roluos and Tuek Lich to the east.[4] It is one of the city's main sources of water and ends in the Tonle Sap lake.[2] The book Angkor: a Manual for the Past, Present, and Future describes the river of today as an artificial channel diverted from a natural stream; a 2003 excavation near the north gate of Angkor Thom traced the original course.[2]
The river holds up to about 200 million cubic meters of water in the rainy season, and runs low in the dry season. Irrigation works built across the city store water for the dry months.[2] Under a royal decree, the river is one of three protected tourist zones in the province, and the authorities have moved people who lived on its banks.[2]
Pagodas along the river
A study by the APSARA National Authority, the government agency that manages the Angkor park, counts twelve Buddhist pagodas along the Siem Reap River, among them these six.[4]
- Wat Bo, built in 1650, one of the oldest pagodas in the province, near the Wat Bo road, known for its mix of Cambodian and foreign hospitality and food.[4]
- Wat Preah Prom Rath, downtown next to the Chas market (Old Market) and Pub Street. Its head monk gave it its present name in 1940.[4]
- Preah Enkosa pagoda, founded in 1503, about a kilometer from the Royal Residence. Its vihara dates from 1925.[4]
- Polangka pagoda, built in 1493.[4]
- Wat Damnak, whose renovated dharmasala became the Center for Khmer Studies library in 1995.[4]
- Teppothivong pagoda, or Wat Thmei, on the northwest side of the city, which keeps the remains of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.[4]
Gateway to Angkor
In 1907 Jean Commaille, a French military officer and artist, became the first conservator of Angkor, and the road from the city to Angkor Wat came to be called the Commaille Road. In his years the journey from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was made by boat. The fragments of statues and inscriptions he kept for study were later moved to the office of the Conservation d'Angkor in the city.[3]
Before air travel, visitors came by boat, ox cart, horse or donkey, often after weeks on the road, by way of Bangkok or of Saigon and Phnom Penh.[5] The hotel historian Andreas Augustin says the only lodging at first was a bungalow of 12 rooms facing Angkor Wat, with about 200 visitors a year.[5] Its French manager Alfred Messaner enlarged it from 28 to 50 rooms in 1925, when fewer than 500 visitors a year were expected, and the Grand Hotel d'Angkor opened in 1932.[5][6] Today more than 2.5 million people arrive in Siem Reap each year.[6]
Twentieth century
Siem Reap province was among the territories Thailand took from French Indochina under the Tokyo agreements of 1941, which Japan initiated. After Japan surrendered, France refused to recognize the transfer, and an agreement the two countries reached in Washington in 1946 returned Siem Reap, Battambang and the other provinces to Cambodia.[7]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Hang Savyuth, The meaning of the name of Siem Reap province (February 15, 2014; in Khmer)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Cambodianess, Long Ton, The Origins and Belief Surrounding the Siem Reap River (March 6, 2022)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cambodianess, Isa Rohany, Siem Reap: A Popular Road Named after the First Conservator of Angkor (September 10, 2023)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Cambodianess, Isa Rohany, Meet the 12 Pagodas Along the Siem Reap Stream (October 14, 2023)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Kiripost, Prak Chan Thul, When Siem Reap Had Just 12 Rooms: How Cambodia's Tourism Story Began (April 2, 2026)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Cambodianess, Chhuon Kongieng, 'Tale of Two Hotels' Explores Raffles History (April 1, 2026)
- ↑ Cambodianess, Korn Devith, Cambodia-Thailand Border Conflict: History Matters (May 24, 2026)