Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cambodia's history begins in the unique contours of its physical setting. Bisecting the
country from north to south, the Mekong that bore the victims of Wat O Trakuon starts its
journey far outside the country's borders, in the Himalayan mountain valleys that nurture
Asia's great rivers: the Yangtze, the Irrawaddy, the Ganges. After a long journey through
China, Burma, Thailand, and Laos, the Mekong arrives in Phnom Penh, where it mingles
with the Tonlé Sap. While the Mekong is Cambodia's bridge to the world, the Tonlé Sap
is unique to Cambodia—the only river in the world that completely changes direction,
twice each year. In the dry season, the river flows southward from the Tonlé Sap Lake,
a vast central expanse of water stretching over a thousand square miles. Then, when the
monsoon rains come and the Mekong is swelled by Himalayan snowmelt, the pressure
of its flow forces the Tonlé Sap to turn back northward, inundating the lake and flooding
large parts of the country.
This annual flood-cycle provides Cambodians with an agricultural bounty, depositing
rich alluvial silt across the floodplains and renewing the world's largest freshwater fishing
ground. The importance of the seasons—the intertwining cycles of water, rice, and sub-
sistence agriculture—is still marked each year by the Water Festival, when Cambodians
gather in Phnom Penh for boat races on the Tonlé Sap and the Cambodian king stands at
the confluence of the Tonlé Sap and Mekong Rivers to preside over the churning of the
waters.
A millennium ago, these fertile soils and teeming waterways nourished the empire now
known as Angkor, which arose along the northern shores of the Great Lake. At its zenith,
Angkor was the predominant power in mainland Southeast Asia, its influence stretching
from modern-day Vietnam and Burma to the Malay Peninsula. The God-Kings who ruled
Angkor were masters of hydraulics, building dikes and reservoirs to harness the monsoon
floodwaters and amassing huge stores of rice. At its height, Angkor was the largest pre-
modern settlement in the world, a city of more than 700,000 spread over a larger area
than modern Los Angeles. Its crowning achievement was Angkor Wat, built at the king-
dom's height in the early twelfth century. Topped by five towers, arranged in an “X” pat-
tern like the dots on a die, Angkor Wat was designed as a microcosmic representation
of Mount Meru, the center of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology. This vast
complex, still the largest religious building in the world, remains a powerful representa-
tion of Angkor's military, artistic, and economic might, as well as the absolute rule of the
God-Kings, who were said to “eat their kingdom,” ruling with an iron fist.
Angkor Wat has since become Cambodia's talisman, the shining meridian toward
which successive generations of leaders have turned their sails. An image of the temple
has appeared on the flag of every Cambodian regime since independence, including the
Khmer Rouge, who placed its golden silhouette on a background of blood red. Where a
doctrinaire Maoist might have seen a symbol of feudal oppression, Pol Pot saw the shim-