It was a cloudy afternoon on our third day in Siem Reap and we were on our way to a massive 12^th-century temple in a forest-studded setting. Earlier in the morning when the weather was ideal for photography, we paid a visit to the Roluos group of temples – among the oldest ancient sites in the vicinity of Cambodia’s second-largest city. But we figured the weather gods wouldn’t always be on our side throughout this week-long trip, so we told ourselves we wouldn’t wait until it’s sunny to go out and see Angkor Wat, the big temple and main reason for people to travel from all around the world to this corner of Southeast Asia.

Vonn, the same remork (the Cambodian version of a tuk-tuk) driver that took us to Preah Ko, Bakong, and Lolei that morning, navigated the streets of Siem Reap and headed to Angkor Wat with grey clouds hanging above our heads. Once we left the city proper, we followed a road that cut through a thick forest with tall dipterocarps around us whose branches were so high they provided a canopy along the mostly straight course. Sitting quite comfortably on the back seat of the remork, I couldn’t help but recall my first jaunt to the Angkor Archaeological Complex 11 years prior to this trip. Back then, I pedaled my way from the modest hostel where I stayed in the city to the major ancient temples in the north. Based on my rough calculation, I must have cycled around 30 kilometers or more on that one day alone when I went to Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Ta Prohm. My present-self finds it hard to believe, but I can assure you that it did happen.

As my mind began drifting further down memory lane, my olfactory senses caught something pleasant. What is this nice smell? If you have watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and remember the scenes where Jack Skellington accidentally enters the Christmas world filled with colors and snow, that describes how my brain was at that moment: it suddenly got busy and was filled with curiosity.

What’s this? What’s this?

There’s a sweet scent everywhere.

What’s this?

It’s nice beyond compare.

(Here’s a link to the original song.)

It was only a day later when we found out what actually perfumed the air. At Baphuon, we saw tiny dipterocarp flowers strewn all over the causeway. I picked one up, sniffed it, and its vanilla-y aroma exactly matched what we had smelled during our remork ride the day before.

Despite the persistently cloudy weather, arriving at Angkor Wat still gave me a sense of excitement like how it did back in 2011. It’s really hard not to feel awestruck by it. From afar, visitors can already see the iconic spires of the centuries-old monument’s central sanctuary. But to get there, first there is a moat to cross. Measuring 200 meters wide with a perimeter of more than 5 kilometers, this is by no means an ordinary moat as it was created to symbolize the cosmic ocean in Hindu cosmology. Customarily, the sandstone causeway in the west is the main approach to reach the outer enclosure of the temple compound. However, since it was closed during our visit due to ongoing conservation work, we and other visitors had to take a temporary pontoon bridge directly to the south of it instead. This proved to be an exciting way to cross the moat as the floating pieces of the makeshift footbridge went up and down following the movements of the water.

If the entirety of Angkor Wat were its own country, it would have been more than three times bigger than Vatican City – the world’s smallest independent state – and only slightly more compact than Monaco – the second smallest sovereign state on the planet. It’s easy to see why this ancient Hindu temple compound is often considered the largest religious monument still standing today. But this feat wouldn’t have been possible without a king’s ambition of an equal proportion.

In 1113 CE, during a period of time that saw the decline of the Khmer Empire’s power, a new king ascended the throne taking the official name Suryavarman II. He soon reasserted Khmer influence in the region, as well as engaging with Champa, the empire’s neighbor to the east which was a loose confederation of Hindu polities that was both an ally and a rival – depending on circumstances.

Following the tradition of building a state temple carried out by previous kings since the beginning of the Khmer Empire, Suryavarman II commissioned his own. While state temples were customarily grand and imposing, the ambitious king pushed the limits and commissioned a megaproject that would eventually take shape as Angkor Wat. Not only was the scale of it much bigger than that of Bakong, Pre Rup, or Baphuon, but curiously the new state temple of the empire was dedicated to Vishnu, not Shiva as was the norm.

On the other side of the moat, the outer enclosure of the compound stood before us. Near the Western Gopura – the main entranceway to enter the temple – were balustrades, each decorated with seven-headed naga serpents at its ends. As I took the short flight of stairs to the gopura, Angkor Wat’s iconic sanctuary immediately came into view again, this time framed by the gateway’s door. This must be among the most dramatic approaches to an ancient monument, and it gave me the same feeling as the sudden reveal of the Treasury in Petra.

Soon afterward, we walked down the 350-meter cobbled pathway with naga balustrades on both sides, probably built to keep visitors focused on taking a straight line to the central structures. Halfway through, there were two small edifices – purportedly used as libraries in the past – that enticed curious visitors to check them out. As we arrived at the inner enclosure, we were treated to even more elaborate stone carvings created by the skilled hands of Khmer sculptors nine centuries ago. Lion statues as well as floral patterns adorned the staircases and doorways. But probably the most emblematic decoration of all is the female devatas – sometimes confused with apsaras. Although both are celestial beings, the latter is usually depicted as a dancing nymph, while the former takes the form of a standing deity with different styles of headdress.

Unlike most visitors who went straight from the inner enclosure to the sanctuary, also known as the Bakan, we first opted to circumambulate the outer galleries where the walls at the four cardinal directions are covered with intricate bas-reliefs. Taking inspiration from the Hindu epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, other sacred texts known as the Puranas, as well as from Suryavarman II’s military campaigns, the friezes are a testament to the ancient Khmer people’s craftmanship. Among the stories depicted on this part of Angkor Wat are: the Battle of Kurukshetra, the final and devastating war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas (who were cousins) which makes up more than a quarter of the Mahabharata; the different hells and heavens in Hinduism; Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) defeating asuras (a class of celestial beings in Hinduism often associated with negative traits), which was a 16^th-century addition to a previously unadorned section of the inner enclosure; and the Churning of the Ocean of Milk (Samudra Manthana), probably among the most celebrated Hindu stories in mainland Southeast Asia – another version has been put on display at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.

James and I took our time marveling at and taking photos of the friezes showing the scenes of the churning of a cosmic proportion where asuras and their antitheses, the devas, using the mythical Mount Mandara as a churning rod and the serpent Vasuki as a rope coiled around the mountain, work together to extract amrita (the elixir of immortality) from the ocean. Vishnu, in the form of his tortoise avatar Kurma, sits atop the mountain to help it sink. As a result of this, not only did they manage to get the elixir, but other creatures and objects also emerged, including Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth), apsaras, Airavata (the multi-headed elephant that would become the mount of Indra, king of the devas), and Kalpavriksha (a wish-fulfilling tree) – the object I’m most familiar with since it was often incorporated into the relief panels of ancient Hindu temples in Java.

Once we completed the counter-clockwise circumambulation around the outer galleries, we headed to the Bakan, a towering central structure of Angkor Wat that gives this compound its iconic appearance. For some reason, the stairs to reach the sanctum of many Khmer temples were stacked at a hair-raising inclination, and the ones at the Bakan were no exception. I remember having to carefully take one step after another when climbing it on my first visit, and it was no different on my second time. Once up there, the views of the lush plains around Angkor stretched as far as the eye can see, a vantage point probably reserved for the king and a few other people in the court. Perhaps Suryavarman II once stood here and had to pinch himself for having successfully built something so impressive.

Unfortunately, the ambitious king didn’t live long enough to see the completion of Angkor Wat.

During his reign, the Khmer king forged an alliance with Champa, a fellow Hindu kingdom that controlled the coastal regions in what is now central and southern Vietnam. Although relations between the two had not always been amicable, Suryavarman II convinced the crown prince of Champa to join his fight against Dai Viet (Đại Việt), a sinicized nation at that time ruled by the Lý Dynasty based out of what is now Hanoi in northern Vietnam. Multiple joint efforts by the Khmer Empire and Champa to defeat their adversary from the north often ended up in failure – at best they were only marginally successful when they managed to capture just a few Dai Viet areas. When the Cham prince ascended the throne and took the title Jaya Indravarman III, he made a U-turn and decided to make peace with his northern neighbor, a policy that angered Suryavarman II.

The refusal from the king of Champa to join subsequent Khmer military campaigns against Dai Viet led to Suryavarman II’s decision to attack Vijaya, the capital of the mandala of Champa. In the following years and decades, relations between the two Hindu kingdoms turned from sour to completely hostile toward each other. Despite the multiple attacks on Champa and its capital launched by the Khmer army, the latter was at one point defeated by the Cham people who managed to raid Angkor and therefore subjugated the Khmer Empire. It was during this period of instability that Suryavarman II died, probably in one of the episodes of the bloody conflict between the two neighbors.

Angkor Wat was only finished decades after Suryavarman II’s death, but the likeness of the king had fortunately been immortalized on one of the galleries of the temple before his demise. This allows us, modern-day visitors, to see what is in fact the first ever depiction of a Khmer king – previous kings were only mentioned in inscriptions.

The scale of Angkor Wat, its fascinating history, and the plethora of stories carved along its walls and towers ensured a second and third visit from us during our week-long stay in Siem Reap, including one day when the sun was shining brightly. However, while a lot is known about the Khmer Empire, its rulers, and the magnificent temples it left, the same thing can’t be said about Champa. There is a lot less information on the latter (especially in English) compared to the abundance of articles written about the ancient Cambodians. That is why four months after this trip, we decided to go to a place in central Vietnam to see the vestiges of Champa around its former capital of Vijaya. And that is where I’m taking you next.