At dawn or dusk, Angkor Wat dazzles

After 700 years, what remains is more than just remains

More than 700 years ago, Zhou Daguan, a Chinese diplomat, recorded for posterity details of his stay in Angkor in The Customs of Cambodia, a work that would one day play a key role in the discovery of the abandoned, forest-clad Angkor by the French.

Apart from the book, the brick and stone temples that remain are the only tangible way for us of the 21st century to get to know about the art and civilization of the mysterious Khmer Empire of the 9th-14th centuries.