Inside Angkor Tom

These are the elephant sculptures decorating the archway at the east exit from Angkor Tom – the long things are elephant trunks.

So vast is the temple complex that the “inner circuit” driving route that shows you some of the most important sites is more than 30km long and the “grand circuit” is more than 50. Neither covers Banteay Srei or Kbal Spean, the Roluos Group or other outlying complexes often quite grand themselves.

Angkor Tom, which was the largest unified construction, was a massive city many times as large as Angkor Wat, which sits south of it. These photos show some of the temples and gates in and around Angkor Tom, with a side trip for sunset at Phnom Bakheang in the middle.

This one is the Baphuon under restoration; we were sad not to see the inside of one of the “top five” main sites from an art-history and architectural standpoint.