08-BANTEAY SREI + BENG MEALEA + ROLOUS

Beng Mealea was built as a Hindu temple, but some carvings depict Buddhist motifs. Its primary material is sandstone and it is largely unrestored, with trees and thick brush thriving amidst its towers and courtyards and many of its stones lying in great heaps. but a road recently built to the temple complex of Koh Ker passes Beng Mealea and more visitors are coming to the site, as it is 77 km from Siem Reap by road. Coming from Angkor and Beng Mealea to Koh Ker this road led to Prasat Preah Vihear and from there to Phimai in Thailand and Wat Phu in Laos.

Lolei is the northernmost temple of the Roluos group of three late 9th century Hindu temples at Angkor, Cambodia, the others members of which are Preah Ko and the Bakong. and in 893 the Khmer king Yasovarman I dedicated it to Shiva and to members of the royal family.

Preah Ko (The Sacred Bull") was the first temple to be built in the ancient and now defunct city of Hariharalaya (in the area that today is called Roluos). After the Khmer king Jayavarman II founded the Khmer empire in 802 A.D. When he ascended to the throne, he ordered the construction first of Preah Ko, which was dedicated in 879, and later of the temple-mountain known as the Bakong.

Bakong is the first Khmer temple mountain of sandstone constructed by rulers of the Khmer Empire at Angkor near modern Siem Reap in Cambodia. In the final decades of the 9th century AD, it served as the official state temple of King Indravarman I in the ancient city of Hariharalaya, located in an area that today is called Roluos. Bakong enjoyed its status as the state temple of Angkor for only a few years, but later additions from the 12th or 13th century testify that it was not abandoned.