The Southeast Asia Travel Specialists Since 1999
Photos and brief descriptions of some of the Khmer artefacts in the National Museum Bangkok originating from Angkorian and pre-Angkorian period temples in present-day Thailand. Bear in mind, of course, that the museum only displays a fraction of its myriad exhibits at any one time and there are certainly far, far more such artefacts in storage. Lintels Fragment of an…
In a Buddhist monastery, atop a low, wooded hill, in a far-flung corner of Chanthaburi Province, a venerable old monk guards a mysterious ancient carving. He says he’s been protecting it day and night for some 30 years now; guarding it with his life for half a lifetime. This is not a script for the latest Indiana Jones sequel –…
As you’ll discover on our Beyond Angkor tour there are myriad, spectacular, lesser-known Angkor temples (as well as pre-Angkor) lying the length and breadth of Cambodia just waiting to be explored. Of course, iconic Angkor Wat, Bayon’s mysterious carved faces and the roots and creepers of atmospheric, jungle-clad Ta Prom are justifiably world-famous but some of these remoter and far…
Sambor Prei Kuk; – the earliest known Khmer city in Cambodia is a superb site, yet one that’s largely overlooked by visitors to the kingdom. Dozens of decorated brick towers dating from the 6th and 7th centuries – some ruinous, some still remarkably well preserved, are scattered through picturesque forest some 30 kms north of the provincial town of Kompong…
An isolated and very rarely visited ruined Angkor period temple site, Prasart Kok Roka in Cambodia’s Kompong Thom Province is famous, well locally at least, for being the area’s very own leaning tower. According to some locals, the depression in the ground in front of the temple is rumoured to be a bomb crater which supposedly tilted the tower to…
You wouldn’t guess today, looking at the scrub-covered low hills surrounded by paddy-fields and red-roofed temples, that the site of Udong, some 40 kilometres north of Phnom Penh, was for a long period the capital of the Khmer kingdom. As in Angkor times, only religious edifices such as the surrounding temples and various shaped and sized stupas that dot the…
The tiny, but well preserved Prasart Phnom Ngok or Chnork in Kampot Province is probably the best candidate for Cambodia’s oldest temple (or at least reasonably intact oldest temple. It clocks in at some 1,600 – 1,700 years (estimates do vary). That’s nearly twice as old as Angkor Wat! A brief history With the expansion of the Chenla kingdom, from…