Angkor Temples 2: Remains of an Early Khmer Capital

For our second real day of temple sightseeing, we went back to the early days of the Khmer empire—to the late 800s, when the capital was at a place called Hariharalaya, about 15 km southeast of Angkor Wat. Although the city’s other buildings are gone, a few temples remain, including pretty, plastered Preah Ko (shown above) and imposing pyramid-shaped Bakong. (Those temples are now called the Rolous Group after a nearby river.)

Temple of Bakong in morning half light
The temple of Bakong is a perfectly square pyramid of five levels, built in 881, topped by a tower added a few hundred years later

Bakong is also home to a Buddhist temple (or “pagoda”) and monastery that are a center of the rural community around them. While we were sorting the pictures in the Angkor Temples 2 gallery on a laptop in a cafe in Siem Reap, a young waiter spotted a picture of the monastery and exclaimed with delight, “That’s my pagoda.” He proceeded to tell us about the times he spent there as a child and all of the changes that his grandfather, who is 86, has seen in that area over his lifetime.

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