Preah Khan temple

The temple of Preah Khan (Sacred Sword) is a good counterpoint to Ta Prohm, though it gets far fewer visitors. Preah Khan was built by Jayavarman VII (it may have served as his temporary residence while Angkor Thom was being built), and like Ta Prohm it is a place of towered enclosures and shoulder-hugging corridors. The central sanctuary of the temple was dedicated in 1191, Preah Khan's role as a center for worship and learning. Preah Khan cover a very large area, but the temple itself is within a rectangular enclosing wall of around 700m by 800m. Four processional walkways approach the gates of the temple, and these are bordered by gods carrying a serpent, as in the approach to Angkor Thom. From the central sanctuary, four long vaulted galleries extend in the cardinal directions. Many of the interior walls of Preah Khan were once coated with plaster held in place by holes in the stone.

SRAS SRANG

Sras Srang (Pool of Ablution) is a basin of earlier construction, measuring 800m by 400m. A tiny island in the middle once bore a wooden temple, of which only the stone base remains. There is a mass grave of hundreds of victims of
the Khmer Rouge further north of Sras Srang on the other side of the road . It is marked by a wooden memorial.