Siem Reap

Siem Reap is the town people sleep in to see Angkor, capital of a Khmer empire that once ruled much of Southeast Asia. Angkor Wat is its summit: five lotus-bud towers, a moat almost two hundred metres wide, and hundreds of metres of carved reliefs full of battles and dancers. At Bayon Temple, more than two hundred stone faces smile in every direction at once. At Ta Prohm Temple, the roots of silk-cotton trees have lifted the walls apart, and nobody has cut them back. Further out in the countryside, Banteay Srei Temple cuts pink sandstone as fine as lace. The town itself is low and green, a mix of colonial shophouses, monks in saffron robes and the loud stalls of the Old Market. Fish amok is steamed in a banana leaf, and the Phnom Kulen Waterfall drops off the sacred plateau where the empire was first proclaimed.