Angkor Wat (sunrise)

ប្រាសាទអង្គរវត្ត (Angkor Wat)

Five towers going pink over the pond at dawn

⚠ Cover shoulders and knees

Hours

05:00–18:00 (operator list, checked locally April 2026). Bakan roughly 07:40–17:00

Tickets

Angkor Pass required: 1 day US$37 · 3 days US$62 · 7 days US$72 (official Angkor Enterprise office or angkorenterprise.gov.kh, checked Oct 2026). Under-12s free with passport

Address

Inside Angkor Archaeological Park, about 6 km north of Siem Reap; enter by the west causeway over the moat

At 5am a line of phone torches crosses the dark causeway and settles along the pond just inside the west gate. The sky goes from navy to orange, and the five lotus-bud towers come up as a black cut-out, doubled in the water. Once the sun clears the towers the crowd thins out, and that's when the real visit starts: hundreds of metres of bas-reliefs line the first gallery, and the Churning of the Ocean of Milk on the east side, gods and demons hauling on a giant serpent like a tug-of-war team, is worth a long look. The top sanctuary, the Bakan, is reached by steep stairs and looks out over the moat and the forest.