The many faces of Cambodia

The first of my explorations in Cambodia took me Bayon, a Buddhist temple located within a gigantic temple complex.

The king of the ancient Khmer Empire defeated an army of the Cham people from what roughly is Vietnam today. He consolidated an enormous empire. Like many emperors before and later he went on a huge building spree, erecting temple complexes to his victories and to Buddhism.



What we have today are the many grand faces of Bayon that cover four sides of each of the dozens of towers.

This was a great place to start an exploration of Angkor.