Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

There is no doubt that Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville are the two cities with the best economy in Cambodia, and they are also the core of the country's financial industry. But for Liang En, his bank is obviously the only one in this Colosseum. To be eaten.

More importantly, these two cities are far from Liang En's planned goals. After all, their loan recipients are those engaged in agriculture, and these two cities are obviously not mainly agricultural.

So according to their plan, their first two banks in this country were set up in the provincial capitals of Kratie and Stung Treng provinces in order to maximize their effect.

These two provinces are located along the Mekong River in the north of Phnom Penh and are among the most important agricultural areas in Cambodia. Therefore, locating the bank in this place can directly face future target customers.

At the same time, one advantage of this place is that compared to big cities, the mobility of people in this area is not large, so it will be much simpler to do various surveys.

More importantly, Liang Enyin's actions have left a lot of goodwill in the Buddhist community in the region. At the same time, many villages in the region are centered on temples, so it will be easy to do a credit check for loan money in the future. Quite a few.

Considering that Liang En's loan rate is not very high, these low-interest loans can even be regarded as charitable acts in this area, so it is easy to obtain support from local temples.

After making all preparations, Elizabeth began to deploy professionals to conduct final inspection and analysis of the newly selected targets, while she started a week-long travel plan.

In fact, if you are not particularly interested in Buddhist culture or Southeast Asian culture, you can basically visit all the key scenic spots in Cambodia in a week, and this mainly includes Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat.

Perhaps because this is a predominantly Buddhist country, most of Cambodia’s cultural attractions are related to Buddhism. For this reason, they also have choices when visiting, so that naturally they will not consume a lot of time.

The focus of their trip was placed on Angkor Wat. As a symbol of Cambodia, the world's largest religious building was designated by the United Nations in 1992 according to the cultural heritage selection criteria C(i)(ii)(iii)(iv). The UNESCO World Heritage Committee approved its inclusion in the World Heritage List as a cultural heritage.

Although only the temple is preserved now, it is only part of the capital of the Khmer Empire. You can sit on the local tuk-tuk and drive along the road. You can see the huge Erawan Buddha statue on the city gate from a distance.

"It must not have been easy to build this city back then." Looking at the majestic buildings, Joan of Arc sighed in a low voice. Human beings have a kind of worship of giants in their bones, and Angkor Wat happens to be such a giant.

"Of course, it took 30 years to build the largest temple alone, and the entire city was built through the efforts of generations of Khmer people for hundreds of years." Liang En explained in a low voice.

The history of the city begins with the establishment of the Angkor Dynasty in the 9th century. The first king, Jayavarman II, led the country away from Javanese rule and restored Cambodia's independence.

In 802 AD, he proclaimed himself king and established his capital in Kureng Mountain. After the efforts of several generations of kings, by the beginning of the 12th century, the territory of the Angkor Dynasty expanded to most of Thailand today, and each generation of kings built their own national temple.

At the beginning of the 12th century, Yessuriyavarman II killed his uncle King Dharani Indravarman I and won the throne of King Chenla, and the new king moved the capital to Angkor. Because Suryavarman II obtained the throne through unorthodox methods.

In order to consolidate his prestige, the king had to carry out extensive construction projects and build a temple that was larger than the more than 700 temples built by all previous kings. It would serve as the national temple and the ancestral temple for his own future ascension to heaven.

Therefore, Dibhahara, the chief Brahmin priest who crowned the king, designed this temple for the king to worship Vishnu, and named it the "Vishnu Temple". The construction took 30 years.

Wang Dayuan, a navigator of the Yuan Dynasty, visited Angkor between 1330 and 1339. He called Angkor Wat "Sangxiang Buddhist House", which indicated that Angkor Wat had been converted into a Buddhist temple in the mid-14th century.

Wang Dayuan also reported that Angkor Wat has a "stone bridge covered with gold for more than 40 feet", which is very gorgeous and has the saying of "wealth and wealth".

It is a pity that there is no eternal dynasty. In 1431 AD, Siam, which is now Thailand's capital of Chenla, broke Angkor, and Chenla moved its capital to Phnom Penh. The following year, Angkor Wat was abandoned by the Khmers, and the forest gradually covered the vast area. Uninhabited Angkor.

"Why did they abandon this city?" After listening to Liang En's brief introduction to the history of Angkor Wat, Joan frowned, "After all, this city is next to Tonle Sap Lake, and even if the foundation of the city is destroyed It won’t be difficult to rebuild either.”

"But the problem is that with the rise of Siam, this city is too close to the border, and it is surrounded by a plain that is undefendable." Liang En said while looking at the city hidden in the rain forest in front of him.

"So for the Chenla people at that time, the city was a target to attract enemies, so it was normal to abandon the city and go to the safer south."

Although it sounds very flattering to say that placing the capital not far from the border can be said to be the emperor's defense of the country, this is not actually the case.

Especially in ancient times, when the capital was placed very close to the enemy, a large number of troops and corresponding supplies alone were enough to cause a huge negative impact on a country's economy for any country in the agricultural era.

Some people may argue that Zhu Di changed the capital during the Ming Dynasty of China, but in fact he moved the capital north at that time to serve as the starting point and material supply center for the Northern Expedition.

So when the emperor moved the capital, the entire northern grassland belonged to the Ming Dynasty. The new capital was not considered a border line. However, the emperor later failed and the border line was compressed to the line of the Great Wall. After that, he passively became the emperor guarding the country. .

However, the difference between Southeast Asian countries and China is that these countries do not have the historical baggage caused by Confucianism. They also have traditional habits in the tropics, so abandoning the capital is not a serious problem.

After realizing that the capital was completely exposed to the rising Thai army, the Khmer people at that time moved the capital to the safer south.

As for the reason why the city was abandoned after moving the capital, it is also very simple, because the tropical jungle region of Southeast Asia can be said to be a vast and sparsely populated place, with a lot of land and a small population.

Therefore, with the loss of Angkor Wat's capital function, a large number of people also moved to the new capital. This situation naturally made it impossible to maintain the operation of the original city.

The most famous example here is Constantinople. During the last moments of the Eastern Roman Empire, even though this city had one of the best city defense systems in Europe, it failed to defend the city due to insufficient guard strength.

But think about it, at least in a cold weapon defensive battle, if the defenders can't even stand on the city wall, they really don't need to think about the next thing.

Therefore, even if most of the city's infrastructure at Angkor Wat remained intact after the war, the Chenla people had no choice but to abandon the entire city to avoid becoming the target of repeated plunder.