The Roluos Group of Khmer Temples

38 degrees in the shade. And there's no shade around most of these temples!

Preah Ko
Crumbling brick built temples with carved stone lintels and side panels in the morning sun. The carving is almast baroque in its intricacy, multiple nagas covered in leafy apparel, men riding horses emerging at intervals from the nagas backs, dragons spitting out curling leaves and dancing figures. The bricks are crumbling and the stone carvings peeling off.

Preah Ko was dedicated to Indravarman II, the founder of the Angkor empire, in 879 and thus began a tradition of temples dedicated to ancestors which subsequent Angkorian kings had to build, preferably before building a temple dedicated to their chosen religion.

Originally these temples were covered in white finely carved stucco.

Bakong
A collection of brick temples are completely surrounded by a moat with stone walls, at Bakong. The central one was built on top of a stepped stone pyramid. All apart from this one are in a terminal state of disrepair. But there's a nice new monastery here with its own new temple - abandon the old and build the new - twas ever thus in Cambodia. Vestiges of carved stone lintels remain here and there. These too would have been clothed in white stucco, intricately carved.

Only now that Cambodia (and the world) realises what a treasure house they possess do they begin, tentatively, with lots of help from other countries, to preserve what is left of their ancient temples.  Around the temples the trees have also been left in peace (in the rest of Cambodia they have been obliterated.) So visiting temples and walking through these magnificent trees, you can begin to imagine what a beautiful country Cambodia once was.

Lolei
Another crumbling brick temple, with a new temple right bang slap beside it.