Ancient City of Ondong

Time of the visit: april the 7th,2025

For 90.000 riel(roughly around 21,5$) a tuktuk driver took me from Cambodia's capital Pnom Penh to Oudong's temple mountain.The journey took about an hour. The driver stopped right next to the tourist information office, where I got a map of all the temples. A few meters away are the stairs leading up to the temple complex. The driver was willing to wait three hours. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, my shirt was soaked with sweat from the high temperatures.Once at the top, you follow a path that goes slightly up and down and leads past various temples to the temple of Vihear Preah Ath Roes, from where it goes back down to the market, which is enormous but only partially used during the week, but suggests that it must be very busy with visitors from the capital at the weekends.

I also visited the quite big and nice Uddom pagoda complex next to the market.All in all I needed around 2h (including a coffee in the market) for that entire area.Since I was faster than I had thought before I ordered the driver to go to Oudong city itself in order to visit the former residence of the king when Oudong used to be the capital of Cambodia.That area is now a big Buddhist complex with many new pagodas.The driver had been to Oudong's famous mountain complex many times, but the old royal compound was a …

Ever wondered what the Cambodians were doing between the fall of Angkor (early 15th century) and the start of the French Protectorate in the late 19th century? They had to endure repeated invasions and interferences by the Siamese and Vietnamese, and there was even a Cambodian-Dutch War! Oudong was the capital for most of this period – a trading river port in Central Cambodia, also known for its silver workshops.

The TWHS description shows no focus and a nomination doesn’t seem likely in the near future, despite remaining on Cambodia’s most recent Tentative List in 2020. To a casual visitor nowadays it mostly resembles a sacred mountain ‘experience’. It all revolves around Phnom Oudong, a hill ridge, covered with animist, Hindu, and Buddhist temples and shrines. It also has stupas in remembrance of deceased members of the Royal family.

I arrived around 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and it was so busy that the police even had to direct the traffic flow. It seemed that I had just missed ‘the party’, as tuk-tuks full of orange-clad monks were already leaving. At the base of the hill, there are numerous food stalls, parking lots and newish temples. Here the stone footpath starts that leads from one end of the ridge to the other, the trail can easily be seen on Maps.me.

The path is crammed with one shrine, stupa, or temple after the other. I had no idea what I was looking at, although the animist …

Yesterday I went to Oudong Mountain.It is a religious mountain with a lot of temples, pagodas on the mountain. Some are very New, others are older. Some are small, others are bigger. The view from the hill is spectacular. I went up by the stairs and went down the other way. Not so many tourists during the week, But the weekend must be crowded, seeing all the infrastructure there. Also in the surroundings you see a lot of temples. On the parking lot is a small structure with bones from the red kamer horror.

You drive there on the highway 5 to Battambang, from Phnom Penh it is almost 1h30min and Price for tuktuk is 20 USD.

Last year, I went on a trip to Udong mountain (or Phnom Preah Reach Trop in Khmer). I went there by bicycle with my sister and her friends.It is about 45km from the capital of Phnom Penh. In fact, we can also reach there by bus. The site is so beautiful, and the mountain is not so high that we can reach the top easily. From the top, I can see a lot of beautiful rice fields, pagodas, and houses. There are some mysterious places there and big buddhas. The nature and ancient places there are quite fantastic!