Until recently the one horse town of Siem Reap was just a dusty track with a few shop fronts but in a matter of years it has been transformed into the gleaming gateway to one of the World's archaeological marvels - the Temples of Angkor. Built between the 7th and 11th centuries the temples were devoted to Buddhist and Hindu deities. Thirty-nine kings reigned during the Angkor era, and this uninterrupted period of peace and prosperity created the most powerful kingdom in South East Asia, until its fall in the 15th century, when the Siamese army finally succeeded in sacking it. Although the Khmers knew about the city of Angkor, it was only when the French botanist Henri Mouhot led an exploration to the area in 1861 that this 'lost city' aroused international interest.