Preach Vihea Temple

    Cambodia has a lot of ancient temple in most provinces. Among those, Preach Vihea is sacred shrine which is located on the very high and smooth plateau along the Dang Rek Mountain in Preach Vihea province. This shrine first built by the King Yasa Varaman in 9th century. All form of this temple is the basic of Khmer Arts include planning, building draft, and other sculptures. On the sculptures we can only see Khmer Script and Sanskrit. These evidences clearly verified that “Preach Vihea” belonging to Cambodia.
    Under French colony, Preach Vihea temple was controlled by Siem (Thailand). Although our country got independent from French, Siem didn’t it to Khmer. Moreover, Siem had used all kinds of malfeasant triks and declared that Preach Vihea belonged to them.
    In 1962, under the premiership of King Norodorm Sihanouk, the King had tried all his beast in demanding by peaceful talk. Finally the international court at Lahe had judged in unanimity that Preach Vihea belonged to Cambodia on June 15th, 1962.
    This enthusiastic news had spread across the whole country that made all Khmer people very happy and cheerful tocongratulate in accepting this temple which was becoming as the Khmer Heritage as before.
    For this testimony of satisfaction, the chief of state, King Norodom Sihanouk made a formal visiting to PreachVihea to be the symbol of Khmer Heritage on January 5th, 1963.