Your Essential Companion to Angkor Temples
Visiting old ruins and places often induces a common thought into travelers’ minds: what did it look like ages ago? Some historical sites will create models and drawings of what they suspect temples, churches, institutions, used to look like, however, with many, you are left to your own vices to imagine the past. ABOUTAsia Travel, however, may be changing that imaginative ability; they just created The Angkor Guidebook with visual reconstructions of the history of the famous historical site, Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat is in Angkor, Cambodia, in the Siem Reap Province. Built by Khmer King Suryavarman II in the 12th century, it served as the capital of the famous Khmer Empire. It was first a Hindu temple complex, and then became a Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia. It’s now the largest religious monument in the world, and brings visitors back centuries ago.
In 1992 Angkor was established as a UNESCO World Heritage site, enabling the government to fund restoration products and introduce it to the country as a large potential source of revenue. One of the most famous global tourist attractions with an annual increase of about 20% per year, Angkor Wat is well travelled. In 2013, 2 million people came to view the temples.
The tour companies, and now this innovative guidebook, may serve to increase those numbers. Bruno Levy, a French artist living in Cambodia, designed the images in the book. There are digital recreations of the temples and cityscapes, as he believes they stood centuries back. The book comes with 3-D interactive features and 19 images are on plastic pages so that visitors can place them atop the ruins when they visit, to truly understand the transformations in this part of the world.
Andrew Booth, the writer, explains the histories of over 30 cities, temples, and towers, as well as explaining which places are must-sees, and how long it takes to see them. Many guidebooks for Angkor Wat exist, though they are not quite like this one.
The profits of the book will go to support children’s education, as ABOUTAsia Traveler’s partner is ABOUTAsia Schools. The guidebook is priced at $29.95.
