The province is in the valley of the Mun River , a tributary of the Mekong. The temple faces north and was built to serve the Sisaket region. Earlier maps had shown it as inside Thailand. However, a boundary survey conducted by the French for the Franco-Siamese Treaty of deviated from the agreed-upon international divide by watershed in order to place the temple on the French Cambodian side. The Thai government ignored the deviation and continued to regard the temple as being in Sisaket Province.
In the mid s, newly independent Cambodia protested the Thai "occupation" of what the French map showed as theirs. Since the French map was clearly incorrect, in the Thai government agreed to submit the dispute to the International Court of Justice. The court voted nine to four to confirm the border as shown in map and awarded the temple to Cambodia.
Access to the temple is still principally from the Thai side, as the ruins are difficult to reach from the Cambodian plains at the bottom of a sheer cliff several hundred meters below.
The Cambodian government has expressed interest in building a cable car to carry tourists to the site, though this has yet to happen, pending resolution of the ownership of other areas in the CambodianβThai border dispute. The many Khmer ruins found in the province show the area must have been important to the Khmer empire at least by the 12th century, although it was apparently sparsely populated.
Ethnic Laos began settling the northern portion of the province, and in the town Sisaket was formed, subject to Khukhan. Monthon Udon Thani was created in , and assumed the administration of the most of region. In the monthon system was ended, and the province of Khukhan was administered directly from Bangkok. Five years later, the name of the town and province were restored to Sisaket, with the district containing Huai Nua being called Khukhan.
