Place

Takeo

តាកែវ

Takeo (តាកែវ) is a province in southern Cambodia, on the border with Vietnam. The Into Cambodia guide calls it the "birthplace of Khmer civilization", because the early kingdom of Funan had its center there.[1] Angkor Borei, in the province, was a walled town of at least 300 hectares and may have been a capital of Funan.[2]

Geography

The province borders Kandal to the north and east, Kampong Speu and Kampot to the west, and Vietnam to the south and east. It covers 3,563 square kilometers (1,376 square miles).[1][3] Takeo town lies 77 kilometers from Phnom Penh by National Road 2, and a railway crosses the province.[1] Small rivers and canals run to the Mekong, and around Angkor Borei and Phnom Da the land floods for half the year.[1][4]

The province has one municipality, Doun Kaev, which is the provincial seat, and nine districts: Angkor Borei, Bati, Borei Cholsar, Kiri Vong, Koh Andaet, Prey Kabbas, Samraong, Tram Kak and Treang.[1]

People

The provisional count of the 2019 census found 899,485 people in 199,362 households, up from 844,906 in 2008. That was 5.9 percent of the people of Cambodia. With 252 people to the square kilometer, Takeo came after only Phnom Penh and Kandal among the most densely settled provinces. Women outnumbered men, with 92.7 men for every 100 women.[3]

History

A ruined sandstone temple with a central tower rising over a long gallery wall and two smaller crumbling towers at its sides, behind a sandy courtyard with pink flowering shrubs, scattered carved stones and palm trees, under a blue sky with white clouds.
Ta Prohm at Tonle Bati, built under Jayavarman VII, in 2015. Photo: Stefan Fussan, CC BY-SA 3.0

Miriam Stark of the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project dates the founding of Angkor Borei to the fifth or fourth century before the Common Era. At its height its walls held more than a dozen brick monuments. Stark links it with the Oc Eo area, now in Vietnam, and with the Chinese records of Funan.[2] Finds at Angkor Borei date from the Funan period, from the eighth century and from the Angkorian period.[4] The Into Cambodia guide writes that the province has as many as 34 temples built before the Angkorian period.[1] A small museum at Angkor Borei shows many of the finds.[1] In 2019 the collections of the Angkor Borei Museum (សារមន្ទីរអង្គរបុរី) were rearranged and shown in a series of exhibitions in Takeo town.[2]

The Khmer Rouge held Takeo in the early 1970s, and the first of their work camps opened there around 1973. In July 2020 the Documentation Center of Cambodia opened a center in Takeo on the Khmer Rouge regime and the years after it.[5]

Temples and sites

Phnom Da (ប្រាសាទភ្នំដា), in Angkor Borei district, is a temple of the eleventh century on foundations from the Funan period.[1][4]

Phnom Chisor (ភ្នំជីសូរ) is a hill about 130 meters high in Samraong district. The temple at its top was built in the eleventh century under Suryavarman I.[1]

Tonle Bati (ទន្លេបាទី) is a lake in Bati district and a place of worship. Two temples stand by it, Ta Prohm and Yeay Peau, with a pagoda, Wat Tonle Bati, that dates from 1576.[1][6] Ta Prohm (ប្រាសាទតាព្រហ្ម) was built in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, in the reign of Jayavarman VII.[6][1] Yeay Peau (ប្រាសាទយាយពៅ) is a small sandstone temple about 100 meters away. Tourism of Cambodia dates it to the twelfth century, and Into Cambodia to the end of the twelfth and start of the thirteenth.[6][1] The lake is a weekend outing spot, where visitors rent bamboo huts on stilts over the water to eat in.[6]

Phnom Tamao, another hill in the province, has a Buddhist pagoda at its top and a wildlife sanctuary.[1]

Economy

Takeo is one of the main rice-growing provinces of Cambodia, and it also grows vegetables, fruit and cassava. Fishing families work its rivers and lakes, above all near Tonle Bati.[1]

Takeo is one of the most famous weaving areas of Cambodia.[7] A study made in 1995 found its weaving villages only in Bati, Samraong and Prey Kabbas districts. The same study found that nearly all the silk thread woven in Cambodia came from Vietnam.[7] In 2022 the director of the Prey Kabbas district culture office said the district had fewer than 3,000 working looms, down from about 5,000.[8] Weavers there make houl (Hol), a many-colored silk. In 2024 one of them said that buyers were turning to cheap cloth from Thailand and that she might give up the craft.[9]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Into Cambodia, Takéo Province (undated)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Angkor Database, Miriam T. Stark, New Perspectives on Early Cambodia from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (2008)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 National Institute of Statistics, Provisional Population Census 2019 (2019)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Tourism of Cambodia, Angkor Borie (undated)
  5. ↑ Cambodianess, DC-Cam Opens a Center in Takeo Province about the Khmer Rouge Regime and its Aftermaths (July 29, 2020)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Tourism of Cambodia, Tonle Bati (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, Morimoto Kikuo, Traces of War: The Revival of Silk Weaving in Cambodia (2002)
  8. ↑ Asia News Network, from The Phnom Penh Post, Hong Raksmey, Takeo hand-woven silk items provide local high-quality alternative to imports (November 22, 2022)
  9. ↑ Cambodianess, Zul Rorvy, Takeo Weaver Battles to Preserve Tradition (June 20, 2024)
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This page was last edited on 17 October 2026, at 00:30.