The Kingdom of Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of over 13 million people. Phnom Penh is the capital city. Cambodia is the successor state of the once powerful Hindu and Buddhist Khmer Empire, which ruled most of the Indochinese Peninsula between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.
A citizen of Cambodia is usually identified as "Cambodian" or "Khmer," though the latter strictly refers to ethnic Khmers. Most Cambodians are Theravada Buddhists of Khmer extraction, but the country also has a substantial number of predominantly Muslim Cham, as well as ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and small animist hill tribes.
Cambodia has an area of 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 sq mi), sharing an 800 kilometre (500 mi) border with Thailand in the north and west, a 541 kilometre (336 mi) border with Laos in the northeast, and a 1,228 kilometre (763 mi) border with Vietnam in the east and southeast. It has 443 kilometres (275 mi) of coastline along the Gulf of Thailand. |