When I see Angkor Wat, one word came into my mind “Angkor Sans Encore”; there is no need to repeat any word of Angkor’s beauty, grand and the overwhelm feeling that happen to almost everyone who see it for the first time as you can read from other posters. Two years ago, I joined the trip to Southern Laos and Northeastern Thailand with an excursion to Preah Vihear of Cambodia to see many amazing ancient Khmer temples in that region. I was really impressed with their beauty and hoped one day I will have a chance to see Khmer cultural apex at Angkor, and finally on March 2009, I had opportunity to go to Cambodia and my first priority was seeing Angkor.

To be honest, all Khmer temples I saw in 2007 cannot be compared with the ruins of Angkor as the art of Angkor is much more superior and offer more styles with many unique structures. Angkor does not mean only Angkor Wat but including many ruins in the vicinity areas such as Bayon, Ta Prohm, Preah Khan, Pre Rup, and with specific mention in the UNESCO document, Banteay Srei and Rolous complex. My review will focus on Banteay Srei and Bakong, the main temple of Rolous complex. Both temples were constructed before Angkor Wat, but their beauty of both places, in my opinion, maybe far better.

Banteay Srei, the beautiful small pink sandstone temple, is unbelievable for its high quality of rock carving, so delicate and unique with shining pink and red. This temple is also the only temple that could be considered as completed as other temples even Angkor Wat had been left unfinished, small but truly a top sight for my trip. Bakong, a pyramid shape temple, has unique look and many similarities with Balinese temple style and is considered to be the first masterpiece on this area that believed to be the capital city of ancient Khmer Empire prior to Angkor. Visit Bakong is not easy as it is quite far from Angkor complex and not included in the typical tourist routes. This temple is not fascinating liked Angkor or Banteay Srei, but for art development, Bakong is the place where you can see the transformation of brick temple to stone temple, so I highly recommended visiting this place.

In my opinion, Khmer art is developed almost in the same style with minor change of decoration, the only thing that change is the size of temple. From small Vat Phou, Bakong, Pre Rup and Banteay Srei, Khmer expanded their temple bigger and bigger until it reached zenith of scale at Angkor Wat follow by little bit smaller but unique Bayon. As I mentioned other Khmer temples in the World heritage list, Vat Phou and Preah Vihear or even Phanomroong in the tentative list of Thailand are very inferior when compared with Angkor, if you see Angkor before you may have negative view on those sites, as I had one with Vat Phou after I saw Preah Vihear, so to avoid the problem and be more appreciated in Khmer art development, try to keep Angkor at the end of your trip, a highly recommendation.

As Khmer civilization is currently underrepresented in world heritage list, Cambodia and its neighbor country, Thailand is starting to propose more sites, and most of their proposal is pre-Angkor temple complexes. So maybe we are going to see many forgotten Khmer ruins be put into the list in the nearby future. A good way to protect their heritage or this is just another way to increase tourists in the lesser-known attractions areas by using UNESCO label.