57 Fun Facts About Cambodia

What is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia?

Phnom Penh: after capturing the city in 1975, the Khmer Rouge forced its entire population out into the countryside.

Angkor Wat, built by Suryavarman II in the 12th century, is the world's largest what?

Religious complex: built as a Hindu temple, it was gradually turned into a Buddhist shrine and has stayed a place of Buddhist worship for centuries.

Which building appears on the national flag of Cambodia?

Its great temple at Siem Reap: the Khmer Rouge put Angkor Wat on their red flag too, as a yellow silhouette with three towers.

Which US president launched the secret B-52 bombing of Cambodia in March 1969?

Richard Nixon: yet US Air Force records declassified in 2000 showed American bombing of Cambodia had begun earlier, in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson.

A 2007 satellite study concluded that Angkor had been the largest what in the world?

Pre-industrial city by surface area: its canals and reservoirs spread over 1,000 km2, and the strain they put on the landscape may have helped undermine the city.

Which kingdom sacked Angkor in 1431, prompting the capital to be abandoned?

Ayutthaya (Siam). Angkor was only partly abandoned afterwards, and historians still debate how much the attack, rather than slow decline, ended the city's power.

Which Khmer king, a devout Buddhist, built the Bayon temple with its giant smiling stone faces?

Jayavarman VII. He built more than 100 hospitals across his empire, and he is now credited with founding a welfare state.

Ta Prohm, the temple famously swallowed by tree roots, is nicknamed after which 2001 film shot there?

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. A Khmer king founded the temple as a monastery to honour his mother.

Cambodia became a protectorate of which European power in 1863?

France. The French then forced a rival neighbour to hand back Cambodia's royal regalia, so King Norodom could finally be crowned in 1864.

Soon after independence, why did King Norodom Sihanouk give up his throne?

To lead the government himself. He handed the crown to his father and became prime minister, holding power as a prince until the 1970 coup.

Which general ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup and set up the US-aligned Khmer Republic?

Lon Nol. He fled into exile on 1 April 1975, 16 days before the Khmer Rouge captured the capital, and died in the United States in 1985.

The Khmer Rouge took the capital in 1975 and ruled until 1979 under which leader, born Saloth Sar?

Pol Pot. He had studied radio electronics in Paris, and he died under house arrest in 1998, years before any Khmer Rouge leader faced the UN-backed tribunal.

Roughly what share of Cambodia's population died under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979?

About 25%. Some 1.5 to 2 million people died of execution, starvation, disease and overwork after the regime forced city dwellers into the countryside.

Under the Khmer Rouge, wearing what could get someone executed?

Eyeglasses. The regime also murdered doctors, lawyers and people who spoke a foreign language as it tried to build a classless farming society.

Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in the capital, was housed in what kind of building?

A former secondary school. After the regime fell in 1979, the prison was turned into a museum of its crimes.

Which country invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge within weeks?

Vietnam. Its troops took the capital within two weeks and installed a new government propped up by Vietnamese aid and advisers.

Which country was the Khmer Rouge's main foreign backer, arming it even after it lost power in 1979?

China. From bases near a neighbouring country's border, the guerrillas kept fighting with Chinese arms through the 1980s.

Sydney Schanberg won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Cambodia's fall to the Khmer Rouge for which newspaper?

The New York Times. Schanberg and his colleague Dith Pran sheltered in a foreign embassy, but Pran, as a Cambodian, had to stay behind.

Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran is credited with coining which phrase about the Khmer Rouge era?

"Killing fields". He gave that name to the sites strewn with bodies that he found in the countryside, and he later escaped across the border.

Which UN mission oversaw Cambodia's civil administration and ran its 1993 election?

UNTAC. After its election, the new National Assembly voted to restore the monarchy, and Sihanouk became king again in September 1993.

Which former Khmer Rouge commander was Cambodia's prime minister from 1985 to 2023?

Hun Sen. He fled the Khmer Rouge to join the forces fighting it, and in 2024, a year after stepping down, he became president of the Senate.

Cambodia's prime minister from 2023 was the first Cambodian to graduate from which military academy?

West Point. He came to power after a 2023 election from which the main opposition party had been barred.

Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni, crowned in 2004, trained and worked in Europe as what?

A classical ballet dancer and teacher. Between his dance studies in Prague and his teaching career in Europe, the Khmer Rouge held him under house arrest in the royal palace.

Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake is famous for what annual phenomenon?

Its river reverses direction with the monsoon. The swollen Mekong pushes water back up the Tonle Sap river, and the lake grows to more than five times its dry-season size.

In 2010, a crowd crush on a bridge in Cambodia's capital killed hundreds during which celebration?

The Water Festival. Crowds leaving the boat races and a concert packed a bridge to Diamond Island, and an inquiry found its swaying set off the panic.

Cambodia's riel traded at about 4,100 to which currency in 2024, also used as daily money?

The US dollar. Cash machines pay out dollars, and shoppers usually get their change below a dollar in riel.

After seizing power in 1975, what did the Khmer Rouge do to Cambodia's currency?

Abolished money entirely. The regime wrecked the national bank, and Cambodia had no currency until a new riel was issued in 1980.

Fish amok, one of Cambodia's national dishes, is a curry with what texture, steamed in a banana-leaf cup?

Mousse-like. The eggs and coconut milk in the curry set as it steams, which is what turns the dish from a curry into something close to a souffle.

Prahok, sometimes called "Cambodian cheese" for its smell, is what?

Fermented salted fish paste. Makers traditionally stomped on the fish with bare feet before it fermented.

Which Cambodian province gives its name to a black pepper protected as a geographical indication?

Kampot. Its pepper industry almost died under the Khmer Rouge, and only a few tons a year were being grown by the late 1990s.

Which religion, the state religion under Cambodia's constitution, do most Cambodians practise?

Theravada Buddhism. The Khmer Rouge outlawed religion and left barely any monasteries working, but Buddhism was later re-established as the state religion.

The Khmer language belongs to which language family, alongside Vietnamese and Mon?

Austroasiatic. A neighbouring language from another family shares much of its vocabulary with Khmer after centuries of two-way borrowing.

Cambodia's southwestern coastline lies on which body of water?

The Gulf of Thailand. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge seized the US cargo ship Mayaguez there, and Marines stormed an island where none of its crew were held.

The ancient Cambodian martial art Bokator has a name usually translated as what?

Pounding the lion. The name is thought to come from bok tao, 'to pound the lion', and the Khmer Rouge killed many of the art's masters.

Cambodia's 15-day Pchum Ben festival is timed to what yearly event?

The gates of hell open and ancestral spirits roam. Families give food to monks to earn merit for relatives up to seven generations back.

Which checked cotton scarf, used as a headwrap, belt or child's hammock, is a symbol of Cambodian identity?

Krama. Khmer Rouge cadres wore red-and-white checked kramas with their black clothes, turning the everyday scarf into part of the regime's look.

Which small, round-headed dolphin survives as a critically endangered population in the Mekong?

Irrawaddy. Unlike most dolphins it has no beak, and drowning in fishing gillnets is the biggest threat to its survival.

Cambodia's national mammal, the kouprey, is what kind of animal?

A wild forest ox. Science described it only in 1937, and there has been no confirmed sighting for decades, so it may already be extinct.

Cambodia's national bird, the giant ibis, is confined mainly to which part of the country?

The north. Rangers and villagers there guard the nests of this critically endangered bird, the world's largest ibis.

Cambodia's highest peak lies in which mountain range?

The Cardamom Mountains. Their remoteness and sparse population helped protect much of the range's natural habitat.

Which cliff-top Hindu temple did the International Court of Justice award to Cambodia in 1962?

Preah Vihear. The court also ordered the neighbouring country's troops to withdraw and any objects removed from the ruins to be returned.

Sambor Prei Kuk was Isanapura, capital of which pre-Angkorian kingdom?

Chenla. Old records say the kingdom later split into rival states, Water Chenla and Land Chenla.

Why is Banteay Srei unusual among Angkor's major temples?

It was built by courtiers, not a king. In 1923 a young Andre Malraux, later a government minister, was arrested for stealing some of its carvings.

Which Chinese envoy's 1296-97 stay at Angkor produced a vivid eyewitness account of Khmer daily life?

Zhou Daguan. He found Angkor a thriving metropolis, more than a century before the city was sacked and partly abandoned.

Which naturalist popularised Angkor in the West after his 1860 visit?

Henri Mouhot. He died of fever in Laos in 1861, and the journals published after his death made Angkor famous in Europe.

The Cambodian market town of Skuon is famous for selling which fried snack?

Fried tarantulas. The habit is said to have begun when starving Cambodians ate the spiders to survive under the Khmer Rouge.

Battambang's norry, an improvised bamboo platform with a motor, ran on what?

Old colonial-era railway tracks. With only one line, when two norries met, the one with the lighter load was taken off the rails so the other could pass.

Sinn Sisamouth, the "King" of Cambodia's 1960s rock scene, died how?

Under the Khmer Rouge, in unclear circumstances. He had helped launch Ros Serey Sothea, and the two recorded dozens of popular duets.

On opening in 1937, the capital's art-deco Central Market was claimed to be what?

The biggest market in Indochina. It was built on a marsh that had to be drained and filled before work could begin.

Which 'New Khmer Architecture' architect designed Cambodia's Independence Monument?

Vann Molyvann. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew was so impressed by his work that he wanted to hire him to help plan a new Singapore.

Which Cambodian district was the Khmer Rouge's last stronghold, taken over by the government in 1998?

Anlong Veng. By 2018 the house of Ta Mok, the commander known as the Butcher, had become a tourist site there.

Magawa, awarded a gold medal in 2020 for sniffing out landmines in Cambodia, was what kind of animal?

A rat. He was light enough not to set off the mines he found, and could search ground far faster than a person with a metal detector.

Which explorer's chronicler recorded the name 'Camogia' for Cambodia?

Antonio Pigafetta. He was one of only 18 men who made it home to Spain aboard the Victoria in 1522.

During protests against the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia, National Guardsmen shot dead four students at which university?

Kent State University. The shootings set off student strikes and protests on hundreds of college campuses across the country.

Which industry supplied most of Cambodia's exports in the 2010s?

Garment making. In 2020 the EU withdrew some of Cambodia's trade preferences over human rights, hitting selected garment and footwear exports.

What is distinctive about the Cambodian cyclo, or cycle rickshaw?

Cyclos were popular in the 1990s but are giving way to motorcycle-drawn remorques and Indian rickshaws.

Most of Cambodia's Cham minority follow which religion?

Islam. The Khmer Rouge targeted the Cham along with other minorities, and many were murdered.