Bayon

If Angkor Wat is the principal emblem of the sites here, the brooding faces of the Bayon are a close second. The French explorer who first re-“discovered” this temple described hacking his way through dense jungle and coming upon a pile of rock from which he saw a face peering down at him…and then another…and then he reeled back in near-horror as he realized how many faces there were looking down at him. As Lonely Planet puts it, talk about Big Brother: one theory is the face is modeled on the ruler of the time.