Where in the World is Cambodia

Bordered by Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, the near circular shape of Cambodia is home to a land area of 69,884 square miles, divided into four distinct regions, including the Elephant and Cardamom mountains to the southeast, the Annamite Cordillera to the northwest, the Mekong delta to the southeast and Lake Tonle Sap in central Cambodia. Embraced by a hot and humid climate, during monsoon season from June to October—an annual event that dumps upwards of 200 inches of rain in some regions—as Mekong floodwaters back up into Tonle Sap, the lake’s volume and depth increases six fold, reversing the outflow of water into the Mekong delta from west to east, until the dry season overtakes the nation from November to May, returning the lake’s outflow back to the west.

Three Cultural Regions

Divided into three cultural and historic regions, Funan, Angkor and Phnom Penh, the countries tallest peak can be found at Phnom Aoral, rising 5,948 feet above sea level, some 300 miles from the nation’s capital and largest city Phnom Penh, which is home to an estimated one million lives. Positioned at the confluence of the Mekong and Bassac Rivers and the outflow channel flowing in or out of Tonle Sap, the sprawling city consists of four urban districts and three suburban districts, ranging from wide, tree-lined boulevards and French-colonial homes—built during the nation’s 90-year occupation by the French—to narrow dirt alleys dotted by small, thatched-roof wooden dwellings. As of 2014, Cambodia is home to an estimated 15.41 million people, with an annual GDP of $16.71 billion USD.

Pol Pot

During the brutal dictatorship years of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime from 1976 until his overthrow by Vietnamese forces three years later, the Maoist autocrat oversaw the genocide of an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians—a period when urban intellectuals were ordered into the countryside as forced laborers, witnessing 90% of Cambodia’s arable land cultivated into rice paddies. Today, while rice remains Cambodia’s leading agricultural crop, others include cassava, maize, mung bean, and soybean, while the nation’s primary natural resources include gemstones, oil and gas, phosphates, manganese, iron ore and timber, making Cambodia, a diverse and thriving nation in Southeast Asia.