Angkor VIP tour - Angkor Wat「អង្គរវត្ត」

Angkor Wat「អង្គរវត្ត」

• Date: Early 12th century
• Style: Angkor Wat
• Highlights:  Angkor Wat literally means 'the city which became a pagoda'. It is the World's largest religious monument, apogee of classical Khmer architecture built by king Suryavarman II as capital and state temple dedicated to Vishnu, complete representation of the Hindu universe featuring a broad moat, towers in temple-mountain formation and carvings extremely rich in detail. Dedicated to Vishnu, symbol of Cambodia featured on the National flag. Save for the last of the first day, its W orientation provides gorgeous lightning during the golden hour.

Angkor Wat is completely built of sandstone, making it possible to create all these intricate carvings, and surrounded by a laterite wall - harder material - that measures 1.5km x 1.3km. It is surrounded by a moat, so the first step is to walk over the bridge till you reach the site.

Local inhabitants salute you at the entrance.


The site is very popular with buddhist monks. In the past, all this grass was covered with city life.

Each level is surrounded by long galleries that connect the different gopura (towers) all decorated with various scenes in bas-relief.

After climbing 2 levels, we come to the central structure.

Angkor Wat is a temple-mountain, with  5 gopura in quincunx and the central one symbolizing the Mount Meru. As the temple is much more elevated than the city but humongous in size, it really looks like the final part of climbing a mountain, also because the steps are so steep.

Windows are decorated with intricate colonottes. Most of the walls are covered by extremely intricate bas-relief carvings, which are best explained by your guide. To give you a feeling, just the external gallery wall is covered with some 12,000 square meters of scenes featuring both historical (e.g. procession of Suryavarman II, builder of the temple) and mythological tales (e.g. churning of the sea of milk where Vasuki the nāgarāja or king of snakes, coils around Mount Mascara for 1000 years to extract the amrita or elixir or immortality, aided by Vishnu in the shape of Kurma the turtle, who supports the cosmos while the others are digging; or the Battle of Lanka, end of the Ramayana where the bad monkey king is defeated and Sita is rescued by Rama).

This area was called the Hall of the Thousand Buddhas but unfortunately many of them were either destroyed by the Khmer Rouge or stolen by illegal art dealers in the 80-90s, that's why many statues lack their head.

For more, you will have to come and see by yourself!

This little boy. Also memorable.