Angkor Wat and Beyond: Planning Three Days Among the Temples

Between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries the Khmer kings ruled much of mainland Southeast Asia from a capital north of the great lake of Cambodia. Each built temples, reservoirs and a new city centre. What remains is the largest group of religious monuments in the world, scattered through forest and rice fields outside the modern town of Siem Reap. It has been a World Heritage site since 1992.

Angkor Wat

The greatest of the temples was built by King Suryavarman II between about 1113 and 1150 and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. It became a Buddhist shrine from the late thirteenth century and has never been abandoned.

Its scale is hard to take in. A moat 190 metres wide and more than five kilometres round encloses a walled precinct of over 160 hectares. A causeway leads west to east through three rising enclosures to a central tower 65 metres high, surrounded by four lesser towers. The plan represents Mount Meru, the home of the gods, with its ranges and its ocean. Unusually for a Khmer temple it faces west, the direction associated with Vishnu and with death, and it may have been the king’s funerary temple.

The walls of the outer gallery carry nearly a thousand square metres of relief carving. The most famous panel shows the Churning of the Sea of Milk, in which 92 demons and 88 gods pull on a serpent wound round a mountain to produce the elixir of immortality. Other panels show battles from the Indian epics and a procession of the king and his army. Nearly 1,800 figures of celestial women are carved on the walls, each with different hair and jewellery.

A plan for three days

Day one. Begin with Angkor Thom, the walled city built by Jayavarman VII at the end of the twelfth century. Enter by the south gate, with its avenue of stone giants. At the centre is the Bayon, whose towers are carved with more than two hundred huge, faintly smiling faces. Nearby are the Terrace of the Elephants and the pyramid of the Baphuon. In the afternoon, when the light falls on its western face, go to Angkor Wat.

Day two. Return to Angkor Wat before dawn. The sunrise behind the towers, reflected in the pools in front, is seen by a large crowd. When it is over most of them leave for breakfast, and the galleries are quiet for an hour. Then visit Ta Prohm, left much as it was found, with the roots of great trees gripping its walls, and the smaller Banteay Kdei and the royal bathing pool of Srah Srang.

Day three. Drive 25 kilometres north to Banteay Srei, a tenth-century temple of pink sandstone, small in scale and carved with a delicacy found nowhere else at Angkor. Continue to the river bed of carved lingas at Kbal Spean, or to the overgrown temple of Beng Mealea.

With more time, the tenth-century capital of Koh Ker, two and a half hours to the north-east, has a seven-tiered pyramid in the forest and few visitors.

Practical advice

Passes are sold for one, three or seven days at the official ticket office on the road from Siem Reap, and are checked at each temple. The three-day pass need not be used on consecutive days. Shoulders and knees must be covered at the upper level of Angkor Wat. A licensed guide makes the reliefs intelligible and is worth the modest cost. Distances are too great to walk. Most visitors hire a car, or a tuk-tuk for the nearer temples.

November to February is cool and dry and is the high season. From June to October there are afternoon showers, green rice fields, full moats and far fewer people. Visitor numbers fell sharply after 2020 and have only partly recovered, so the temples are less crowded than they were a decade ago.

Siem Reap has a new airport, opened in 2023, about an hour from the town. Many travellers combine Angkor with the capital, where Rosewood Phnom Penh looks over the Mekong and a new airport has also opened, or with the forest camp of Shinta Mani Wild.