Siem Reap

ក្រុង សៀមរាប Siem Reap
Siem Reap
Coordinates	13 ° 22 ′  N , 103 ° 52 ′  E Coordinates: 13 ° 22 ′  N , 103 ° 52 ′  E
Basic data
Country	Cambodia
province	Siem Reap
Residents	174,265 (January 1, 2005)
Website	www.siemreap-town.gov.kh
politics
mayor	Sou Phirin

Siem Reap ( សៀមរាប , transcription: Siĕmréab , IPA : [ siːə̯mɽiːə̯p ]) is the capital of the province of the same name in Cambodia . It is best known as the city ​​closest to the Angkor Wat temple complex .

geography

Siem Reap is located around ten kilometers north of the western end of Lake Tonle Sap , the largest lake in Southeast Asia and one of the most fish-rich inland waters on earth, on both sides of the Siem Reap River (Stung Seam Reap) and around six kilometers south of Angkor Wat. Like many other smaller cities in Cambodia - Siem Reap only had about 60,000 inhabitants until the tourist influx began at the end of the 20th century due to the temple landscape of Angkor - it developed as an amalgamation of a number of villages that surround the numerous wats ( Buddhist temples and monasteries). The center of Siem Reap is the old market , which is surrounded by French colonial houses.

history

The name means "defeated Siam " or literally "Siam flattened" and is said to refer to a victory of the Khmer over the army of the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya in the 16th century. According to historian Michael Vickery , who specializes in Southeast Asia, this is just a folk etymology , while the true origin of the name is unclear. There may be a connection to Zhenla , an ancient Chinese name for Cambodia, which in times of Tang Dynasty allegedly Tsienliäp was pronounced. Today's city of Siem Reap is located in the historical region of Angkor , which, during its heyday in the 12th century, covered an area of ​​around 1000  km² and was home to up to a million inhabitants.

In the 14th to 15th centuries, Angkor lost its importance and the area came under temporary Siamese influence. After the fall of Ayutthaya, the Siamese king Taksin conquered Siem Reap and Battambang in 1769 . Under the governor Chaophraya Aphaiphubet (Baen), Siem Reap and Battambang Siamese provinces and thus from the rest of Cambodia were separated. In Thai the city was called Siam Rat , which in contrast to the Khmer name means “Siam's victory”. Siamese rule lasted until the treaty of March 25, 1907, when Siem Reap, Battambang and Sisophon were ceded by Siam to France. The city then belonged to French Indochina until Cambodia was given independence in 1953.

In the years of the rule of the Khmer Rouge from 1975, the inhabitants of Siem Reap, like those of all other cities in the country, were abducted for forced labor in the fields. Only after the victory of the Vietnamese troops in January 1979 did they return to their city, which until the beginning of the 1990s was the target of attacks by the Khmer Rouge, who had been driven into the surrounding forests. For years the residents had to protect the city center with barricades. The last attack by an entire battalion on the city and the camps of the UNTAC peacekeeping forces (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) took place in 1993.

See also: History of Cambodia

Population development

year	Population numbers
1998	119,528
2005	139,458
2008	174,265

City structure

The Siem Reap municipality is divided into 11 parishes:

• Slar stuff
• Svay Dangkum
• Kouk Chak
• Sala Kamroeuk
• Nokor Thom
• Chreav
• Chong Khneas
• Sambour
• Siem Reap
• Srangae
• Wat Bo

climate

Siem Reap
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     0.7   32 20th     3.5   33 21st     28   35 26th     61   36 25th     176   35 25th     221   34 25th     237   33 25th     151   32 25th     276   32 25th     248   31 24     82   31 22nd     10   31 20th Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: World Meteorological Organization

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Siem Reap Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 32.0 33.3 34.6 35.5 35.2 33.5 32.7 32.0 32.2 31.3 30.6 31.0 O 32.8 Min. Temperature (° C) 19.7 20.8 26.1 25.1 25.4 24.8 24.8 25.0 24.5 23.9 22.4 20.3 O 23.6 Precipitation ( mm ) 0.7 3.5 28.0 61.2 175.9 221.3 236.6 151.0 276.1 248.0 81.7 10.1 Σ 1,494.1 Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 7th 6th 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 2 4th 7th O 3.3 Rainy days ( d ) 0.8 2.0 3.8 8.0 17.2 20.4 21.8 19.2 21.4 21.4 10.4 3.0 Σ 149.4 Humidity ( % ) 62 57 59 70 76 80 82 82 86 83 76 68 O 73.5 Source: World Meteorological Organization

Economy and tourism

Old Market Area of Siem Reap

During the 1990s, the country's political situation stabilized. Today Siem Reap is a peaceful and by Cambodian standards - the country is one of the poorest on earth, the average monthly income is around 30 US dollars - flourishing city. Tourism has contributed a lot to this .

Rice fields near Siem Reap

Traditionally, rice cultivation and especially fishing in the nearby Tonle Sap were and are the livelihoods and most important source of income for the residents. Since the country was opened to visitors from all over the world, the number of visitors who use Siem Reap as a starting point for their visit to the temples of Angkor has steadily increased and provides additional income opportunities. A number of hotels that had been built at the beginning of the 20th century have reopened since the late 1990s . In addition, a large number of new restaurants, hotels and guesthouses were built, which now cover the entire tourist spectrum - from 5-star luxury hotels to 5-US-dollar rooms. At the beginning of the 21st century, the city presented itself as an up-and-coming tourist center.

Siem Reap has an international airport .

education

See also : Angkor University

Culture

The Cambodian handicrafts, e.g. B. Sculpture with wood or stone or the art of weaving , and arts like classical Cambodian dance and shadow theater, were almost completely destroyed by the murders of the Khmer Rouge, which also killed many artists. In the years since a peaceful civil society was reestablished, a number of workshops and artist groups have sprung up in Siem Reap to revive these arts.

The revival of traditional Cambodian handicrafts began in the 1990s. The oldest initiative was the “Chantiers-ecoles de formation professionnelle” (CEFP), launched in 1992 by the Combodjan Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and the “Ligue française de la formation continue et de l'enseignement”, from 1998 to 2001 supported by the European Union . The social business " Artisans Angkor " that emerged from this educational project is now considered the largest handicraft company and largest silk manufacturer in Cambodia.

Apsaras (Bayon)

The classical Cambodian dance art is presented to the public in the Angkor Village Theater and some hotels (e.g. Grand Hotel d'Angkor , Koulen Restaurant ). With a mixture of pride in its own history and culture and probably also a sense of the needs of tourists, this art is sometimes called the Apsara dance . The dancers wear traditional robes similar to those of the apsaras that can be seen on the walls of many temples in Angkor. Today the dancers wear outer clothing, in contrast to their historical or heavenly role models.

The shadow theater, known in the west primarily in the form of the Indonesian wayang , also has a long tradition in Cambodia. In Siem Reap, for example, there are weekly performances by the children of the Krousar Thmey Foundation (see web links ) in the restaurant of the Hotel La Noria . The traditional stories are sometimes supplemented with contemporary characters and content in order to convey and promote current topics; z. B. Solidarity, respect for the elderly, protection of children and the fight against AIDS (see also sex tourism ). You can also hear Cambodian music with their traditional instruments. The shadow puppets are made in Siem Reap itself, including in the workshop of the House of Peace Association .

One of the oldest Buddhist temples in the city is Wat Bo , on the walls of which you can see some remarkable paintings depicting the life of Buddha . The Wat Thmei houses a stupa with bones of victims of the Khmer Rouge, to commemorate the victims. Another site of remembrance of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the civil war is the Landmine Museum on the road from Siem Reap to Angkor. It is set up and maintained by Mr. Aki Ra , who joined the Vietnamese army at the age of 13 to fight the Khmer Rouge and who defused mines during the war. In addition to a large number of mines, there are also pictures he painted in which he processed the trauma of the war. Mr. Aki uses the donations from the visitors to finance the work he still needs to defuse mines that have been found by farmers in the area.

Along the shores of the Tonle Sap Lake there are a number of villages, some of which are made up of stilt houses and some of houseboats and are often referred to as floating villages . During the annual rise in the water level, the residents who live from fishing move with the entire village. Also on the “big lake” is the Prek Toal bird sanctuary , which, with its abundance of fish and the surrounding floodplain, is the nesting area for a large number of different bird species.

Jayavarman VII Children's Hospital is located in the northeast of the city . Financed by donations that the Swiss doctor Beat Richner organizes mainly in Switzerland and France, it offers children free medical care. Under the title Beatocello , he regularly plays cello concerts there on Saturdays and talks about the work of the children's hospital . The Angkor Hospital for Children was established in 2004 by the US organization "Friends without a border".

Dith Pran (1942–2008), a Cambodian photojournalist who survived the rule of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, was born in Siem Reap.

sons and daughters of the town

• Dith Pran (1942-2008), photojournalist
• Aki Ra (* between 1970 and 1973), child soldier and initiator of the Cambodian Self Help Demining organization

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Table 3.1 Urban and Rural Population by Province, Cambodia 2008
2. ^ Zhou Daguan : A Record of Cambodia. The Land and Its People. Translated and annotated by Peter Harris. Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2007, footnote 1.
3. ^ David K. Wyatt: Thailand. A short history. 2nd edition, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2004, p. 124.
4. ^ David K. Wyatt: Thailand. A short history. 2nd edition, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2004, p. 140.
5. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
6. ↑ ^{a b} Official Webpage Siem Reap ( Memento from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ From an educational project to the largest employer in Siem Reap province. (No longer available online.) At: http://www.artisansdangkor.com . Archived from the original on May 30, 2017 ; accessed on June 13, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Artisans Angkor - What does it mean to be a social enterprise? In: www.youtube.com. Retrieved June 13, 2017 . 

Web links

Commons : Siem Reap  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikivoyage: Siem Reap  Travel Guide