Kingdom of Cambodia
After spending the morning at Koh Ker we jumped back in the car and hit the road bound for Siem Reap. About 40 km east of Angkor Wat we stopped at Beng Mealea (ប្រាសាទបឹងមាលា), another ruined temple that’s about as Indiana Jones-esque as you can imagine. Read more
On day two of our trip into northern Cambodia we set off early from the hotel. Owned by the family of a military commander it was situated in the middle of nowhere but, despite looking brand new, nobody else seemed to be staying there. Read more
By far the best thing we did during our trip to Cambodia was to hire a driver for two days to visit some of the remote temples in the northwest of the country. The circular route we took was as follows:
Siem Reap → Preah Vihear (overnight stay) → Koh Ker → Beng Mealea → Siem Reap
Our driver, a friendly guy named Sophea, picked us up from our guest house early in the morning and we drove around 5 hours north over dusty roads to the border between Cambodia and Thailand. Read more
Located around one kilometre east of Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm (ប្រាសាទតាព្រហ្ម) was founded by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII as a Buddhist monastery and university. Read more
1.7 km north of Angkor Wat and covering 9 km² lies the last capital of the Khmer empire which was established in the late twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII. At the centre of the city is Jayavarman’s state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around it. Read more
While Cambodia’s recent history has been fairly brutal, the country is probably best known for the sprawling ruins of the Khmer Empire which spanned the 9th to the 15th centuries and encompassed parts of modern day Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. Read more
In recent years my vacation time had become so compressed that there was rarely ever the time to take the scenic longer route anywhere. When it came to visiting Cambodia it would have been fastest to fly in via Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh but since I had managed to carve out two weeks of leave I instead opted to take the train. Read more