Prasat Sralao

No Angkor pass is needed. The temple is reached on dirt tracks through the paddy fields north-west of Angkor Thom, by motorbike rather than car or tuk-tuk, and the last 300 m or so are on foot across a small dam.

After heavy rain the tracks turn to mud and can be impassable. The dry season is the time to go.

Sralao, ស្រឡៅ, is a tree: a crape myrtle, common around Angkor, whose wood is used for building. The temple stands on a wooded island in a wide moat, among the paddy fields about 5 km north-west of Angkor Thom's North Gate, just outside the Angkor park.

There were three brick towers in a row, facing east. The south tower has collapsed and little is left of the central one, though the sandstone door frames of the hall in front of it still stand on their own. The best-preserved tower has a fig growing from its top, its roots gripping the brick all the way to the ground. Inside, the roof has gone and you look straight up through the roots to the canopy.

The marker on site says early 11th century, but the temple is usually dated to the second half of the 10th, the time of Banteay Srei. The towers' stone trim is the same pink sandstone, carved in the same style, probably by the same carvers: Sralao is the only temple outside Banteay Srei itself with original carving of that kind.

The best of it is no longer here. A lintel of Vishnu riding Garuda, with a frieze of twelve dancers above, was taken to Phnom Penh by Henri Marchal, curator of Angkor, in March 1937. It is now in the National Museum of Cambodia. Another carving from Sralao is in the Tokyo National Museum.

An inscription found here was carved later than the temple. It shows King Harshavarman III still reigning in 1071 or 1072, the last record of him that survives.