Siem Reap (Angkor)

Why Siem Reap (Angkor) works

Siem Reap exists almost entirely in service of the Angkor Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning over 400 square kilometres of temple ruins built between the 9th and 15th centuries as the capital of the Khmer Empire. Angkor Wat itself, the largest religious monument in the world, is best experienced at sunrise, when the silhouette of its five central towers — a design so significant it appears on the Cambodian national flag — emerges against a lightening sky reflected in the moat's still water. Bayon, at the centre of the walled city of Angkor Thom, is famous for its 216 enormous serene stone faces carved into 54 towers, each believed to represent either the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or King Jayavarman VII himself. Ta Prohm has been deliberately left largely as it was found by 19th-century French explorers, with massive silk-cotton and strangler fig tree roots engulfing the temple's stone corridors in a scene made globally famous by the film Tomb Raider. Banteay Srei, a smaller pink sandstone temple built for a different patron than the royal monuments, is celebrated for the extraordinary fineness of its carved reliefs, among the most intricate in all of Khmer architecture. Beyond the temples, Siem Reap town itself has developed a genuinely good restaurant and bar scene around Pub Street, and a sunset cruise on the nearby Tonle Sap Lake reveals the floating villages of Cambodia's freshwater fishing communities.

Trip Snapshot

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