Siem Reap Information

Siem Reap

Siem Reap has colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter, and around the Old Market. In town, there are Apsara dance performances, craft shops, silk farms, rice-paddy countryside, fishing villages and a bird sanctuary near the Tonle Sap Lake.

Siem Reap today, being a popular tourist destination, has a large number of hotels and restaurants. Most smaller establishments are concentrated around the Old Market area, while more expensive hotels are located between Angkor International Airport and the town along National Road 6. There are a variety of mid-range hotels and restaurants along Sivatha, and budget to mid-range hotels in the Phsar Leu area.


The Province

Siem Reap is small charming gateway town to the world famous heritage the Angkor temples. Thanks to those attractions, Siem Reap has transformed itself into a major tourist hub. Siem Reap nowadays is a vibrant town with modern hotels and architectures. Despite international influences, Siem Reap and its people have conserved much of the town's image, culture and traditions.


The Wat and the river

The town is a cluster of small villages along the Siem Reap River. These villages were originally developed around Buddhist pagodas (Wat) which are almost evenly spaced along the river from Wat Preah En Kau Sei in the north to Wat Phnom Krom in the south, where the Siem Reap River meets the great Tonle Sap Lake.

The main town is concentrated around Sivutha Street and the Psar Chas area (Old Market area) where are located old colonial buildings, shopping and commercial districts. The Wat Bo area is now full of guesthouses and restaurants while the Psar Leu area is often crowded with local commerce. Other fast developing areas are the airport road and main road to Angkor where a number of large upscale hotels and resorts can be found.


All things tourist

Businesses centered around tourism flourish thanks to the tourism boom. There are a wide range of hotels, ranging from several 5-star hotels and chic resorts to hundreds of budget guesthouses. A large selection of restaurants offer all kind of food, including Italian, French, German, Russian, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Burmese. Plenty of shopping opportunities exist around the Psar Chas area while the nightlife is often vibrant with a number of western-styled pubs and bars.

Most tourists come to Siem Reap to visit the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom,(about 6Km north of the city),and other Angkor ruins. While those are still the main attractions, there are plenty of other things to experience, such as a dinner with an Apsara Dance performance, a trip to fishing villages and bird sanctuary, a visit to a craft workshop and silk farm, or a bicycle tour around the rice paddies in the countryside.


Overview

Located in northwest Cambodia, Siem Reap is the major tourist hub in Cambodia, as it is the closest city to the temples of Angkor. The most recognizable of the temples, Angkor Wat, literally Capital Temple, built by King Suryavarman II the early 12th century provides the largest tourist draw. Recently the city has seen a great deal of expansion, hundreds of hotels, restaurants and shops, catering to both international and Cambodian tourists have opened to serve the influx of visitors. Also, King Norodom Sihamoni and the Cambodian royal family maintain a residence in the town. The Angkor temple complex is north of the city.

Other sites of interest near Siem Reap include Angkor Thom built by Jayavarman VII, Banteay Srei, Ta Prohm, as well as hundreds of other temple ruins. Angkor, and the surrounding area that would later become known as Siem Reap, faced repeated invasions from the Thais, and ceased to be the capital after a seven-month siege in 1431. The capital was moved to Phnom Penh in 1432, and then to Lovek and Oudong, before moving back to Phnom Penh in 1866. The temple ruins were visited by Western explorers and missionaries before the 19th century, but Henri Mouhot is generally seen as having "discovered" Angkor Wat in 1860.

While under Siamese control, the province was named Siam Nakhon (Siamese City), and was renamed to Siam Reap (meaning Siam defeated) after Siam had to cede it to French Indochina in 1906.


Blind obedience to templates

One of the sections in the Siem Reap page is entitled "By land", as it covers buses, taxis and pickup trucks plying the same highways to the same destinations. I would like to keep it that way. Going by bus/taxi/pickup to Bangkok and Phnom Penh, on the other hand, are quite different because the first route involves crossing a tough border and the other doesn't; I would also like to keep the subsections for these separate. (As on example, a warning about scams and hassles at the border doesn't apply to anyone coming from PP!)

And why, pray tell, was the immensely useful external link to Tales of Asia's Cambodia Overland page removed?

So please outline any objections here before you go change the page. Thank ye. Jpatokal 23:43, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Jpatokal, I'm not following you on why you think this link is appropriate under the ext link policy. Could you please elaborate? -- Colin 04:15, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Tales of Asia provides the exceedingly useful service of an up-to-the-week update on road conditions in the country. In the first world country, this would be provided by the "first source" of the Ministry of Transport, but this is Cambodia and such sources don't exist (at least not online). Jpatokal 07:09, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

My new world country sucks at this kind of thing :-). I think the link can stay but it should be in the Get in or Get around section with some advisory that the traveller should consult the extlink for current road conditions. It looks weird in the extlink section to me. And the emphasis should be on the usefulness of the current road conditions rather than the "chock full of information" -- Colin 14:45, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I am frankly very tired of people being overly protective of their own pet pages. While arguably the "get in" section organization isn't a big deal (I'll always opt for consistency, but it's not that big a deal), the "Tales of Asia" link is definitely an "other guide" link, a secondary source, and has got to go according to the ext. link policy. -- Nils 04:19, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I place utility above vague policies. ToA is a must-read for anyone planning to travel overland in Cambodia, and Wikitravel isn't about to replace it as such. Jpatokal 07:09, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

The policy does not take "utility" into consideration. As I said, if you disagree with the policy, have it changed. Until the policy is changed, we shall follow it. -- Nils 11:04, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

1) Your beloved, carved in stone, Richtung und Ordnung policy says, and I quote, "avoid". It does not say "never, ever link to".
2) The traveller comes first is a superpolicy that overrides anything else.
But the discussion has duly started on Wikitravel talk:External links. Jpatokal 11:23, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

The rest of us are tired of people being overly fussy about "the rules", and running around deleting useful information all over the place without the tiniest amount of thought as to why the information is there, or how useful it might be. Could it perhaps be that somebody who's contributed a lot to a given page thinks the link would be useful for a traveler? Perhaps those contributors are in a really good position to decide which links are worthwhile and which are not, and maybe just maybe we should consider Assuming good Faith before deleting that stuff willy-nilly. -- Mark 08:31, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

If you dislike the policy, start a discussion about it and get people to agree to change the policy. It does not matter how useful those pages may be. Please point that paragraph of the ext link policy out to me. Do you guys have some sort of attention disorder that I have to repeat myself so often? -- Nils 11:04, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I'll take ADD over ad hominem attacks, thank you. Jpatokal 11:23, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Says the guy who brought user nationalities into the argument... But hey, whatever floats your boat. -- Nils 11:56, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

"Useful and worthwhile" is a terrible justification for an extlink. Other guides are often useful and worthwhile, but we don't link to them. In this case, current road conditions seems like a valid reason to me, but in general, usefulness and worth are insufficient cause. -- Colin 14:45, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Current road conditions seems like a valid reason to me too, and probably would to anybody else capable of reason, but sadly some people who like to appoint themselves site-wide policy enforcers don't seem capable of dealing with fine points or shades of gray, so sadly the policy will have to be clarified to adapt to such black-and-white thinking. -- Mark 16:00, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)
Retrieved from "http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Siem_Reap"


History

The beginning of the Khmer or Angkor civilization takes place during the period from 802 to 1431 A.D.. Il stretched, then its apogee, up to the Thailand-Burma border in the West and Wat Phou of Laos in the North.

It appeared owing to the ancient Khmer rulers who strengthened unity between peoples with a good political doctrine and the development of an intelligent irrigation system who allowed to control water of the Mekong River for agricultures and so to work out its prosperity. Then it were slowly deteriorated during five century. Of this Khmer Civilization, it left some fabulous and exceptionals monuments (like Angkor Wat and Bayon Khmers temples), some numerous sculptures.

The word " Angkor " is derived Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language), of " Nagara " which means " City ". Angkor Wat literally means " City of Temple " and Angkor Thom " The Magnificent City ".

The ancient Khmers were great masters of stone carving and we can see the evidences of various Angkor temples who extended on the large plain of Siem Reap up to outside of Cambodian border to the Preah Vihear at Dangrek mountain, Phnomrung and Phimai in Thailand and Wat Phu in Laos. These temples were make up patiently during centuries by Khmer artisans. This expect a main energy to realize such efforts as a long time, in contradiction with the normal and easy life of the Khmer people and villagers of their time.

For historians and archaeologists, it is not easy to do the detailed study of Khmer civilization. Most of the writing, found after the excavation of Angkor, were carved in the stones, who became the best support against time wear. They are important evidences to understand the basic constituency of Khmer society and its chronology. They relate principally religious rituals, king's praise and literatue of Indian epics of " Ramayana " and " Mahabharata ". There is not much things on the subject of the ordinary life of the local people.

It is owing to a Chinese Ambassador, Zhou Daguan in the middle of 13th century during the Chinese dinasty Yuan, who traveled to Angkor, lived with peoples and explored the empire during one year, that we learn more things about Khmer civilization. He writed very clearly and vividly how people were live in the khmer society in this period.

Angkor Wat represent center of Khmer civilization. It is situated on the plain of Siem Reap province north of the Great Lake of Tonle Sap.

All along Khmer history, the throne were often desire, which involved some violent bloodshed. Differents successive kings build each one a different capital, alls in the Angkor Wat and Ruolos sector, with some names like Hariharata, Yasodharapura, Jayendanagari, Angkor Thom and a lot of others unknown names.

Much temples like Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom represent incontestably the relics of the past Khmer Civilization.

In the Khmer society, hierarchy include above the God-King, surrounded by brahmins tutors and the members of his royal family. The priests who live in the temples were also powerful and contoled their own lands and paddy fields.

The names of donors were written in the stone, on the temples and we learn that they were allowed noblemen or high dignitary responsible for the administrative and judiciary tasks, how that may be, all this wasn't very precise for historians, it is so difficult to drow up a complete list of the Angkor Empire hierarchy.

The Khmer Civilization economy was based principally on agriculture, the majority of people was farmers or peasants and some of the less wealthy of them was fastened to large landowners or of the temples.

The lowest hierarchy of the Khmer Civilization was reserved to slaves who beloyed at temples, which we found the majority of the names inscribed on the stone. Their names was keeped in a holy place, what who let think they could not have been the low class slaves as its word " slave " implied. For historians they were only temples servants and priests were " Gods slaves " and not to any human being. In fact, slaves were mostly captured in the neighboring countries, but Khmer people themselves could fall in the lowest status and being a " slave " if they failed to pay their rents or loans to the upper ruling class.