Officially the Kingdom of Cambodia is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina peninsula. It is 181,035 square kilometres in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Population is about 17 million.
During a visit to Thailand in 2007, we booked a 2-day tour to Siem Reap in Cambodia to see the famous Angkor Archaeological Park.
Angkor was the capital city of the Khmer Empire, located amid forests and near modern-day Siem Reap, and flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. A Khmer rebellion against Siamese authority resulted in the 1431 sacking of Angkor, causing its population to migrate. Angkor had been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, with an elaborate infrastructure system of at least 1,000 square kilometers with temples at its core. The area may have supported between 750,000 and one million people. Angkor is considered to be a “hydraulic city” because it had a complicated water management network, which was used for systematically stabilizing, storing, and dispersing water throughout the area.