Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei

Twin hills — 'Man Hill' and 'Woman Hill' — topped with shrines and stupas

Six kilometres west of Kampong Cham, two small limestone hills rise from the flat rice paddy. Phnom Pros ("Man Hill") has a road that climbs to the top, where a modern Buddhist temple and a memorial to Khmer Rouge victims overlook the surrounding plain. Phnom Srei ("Woman Hill"), opposite, is the taller and quieter of the two — a stiff climb up cracked concrete steps through scrub forest, with macaque monkeys watching from the trees and a small ruined shrine at the summit.

The view from either hill stretches across the Mekong plain to the river, and both are good places to be at sunset. The site is one of the few mass-grave memorials outside Phnom Penh: the simple stupa on Phnom Pros holds the skulls of Khmer Rouge victims murdered nearby.

things to do sight
A story
A Cambodian folk story explains the two hills as the outcome of an ancient men-versus-women race to build the tallest hill before sunrise. The women lit a fire to fool the men into believing dawn had come; the men quit, and the women's hill — Phnom Srei, still the higher of the two — won. So the saying goes that ever since, men have proposed to women and not the other way around.