Morning was spent at Thom Temple - ប្រាសាទ កោះកេរ and Pram Temple - ប្រាសាទ ប្រាំ, Koh Ker, and after a pretty good lunch at Som Ros Neary Restaurant we crossed the road into Prasat Beng Mealea (lit. Lotus Pond) - ប្រាសាទបេងមាលា.
Construction is estimated as somewhere during the mid twelfth century, by people more expert than I, based on design and construction similarities between it and Angkor Wat; like Angkor Wat it was originally built as a Hindu Temple, but not later converted to Buddhist use. No extant documentation exists on Beng Meala making it impossible to know who commissioned one of the largest and most precisely engineered temple complexes in Cambodia. According to Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques in their book Ancient Angkor it occupied a strategic position “ “where the royal way to Koh Ker in the NE forks from the road E to the ‘great Preah Khan’, and also at the head of a canal that leads directly to the Great Lake [Tonlee Sap], down which great sandstone blocks from the nearby quarries could have been floated [by raft] on their way to Angkor.”
Over the years the forest encroached and only a small portion has been cleared away meaning that most of the complex is heavily shaded as you walk around. It’s only been accessible since “the early 2000's due to buried land mines, a legacy of the Khmer Rouge era and its aftermath” which means that it’s been saved from any restoration work except some basic stabilisation and a winding wooden walkway; stone blocks remain scattered where they originally fell. both inside and outside the main temple.
