East Baray Archaeological Site

Address: East Baray, near Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia

Website: https://apsaraauthority.gov.kh/ (Apsara Authority)

Hours: Open - daylight hours best for visiting

Admission: Free to visit the reservoir; Angkor Archaeological Park ticket required for temple complexes nearby

The East Baray is a major artificial reservoir from the Angkor civilisation located in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, and is one of the largest barays associated with the Angkor temple system.

A broad rectangular expanse defined by surviving embankments, with the 10th-century East Mebon temple standing on a central island when the baray holds water. The baray’s scale and the temple island are the primary visual and archaeological attractions, especially when reflected water remains on the basin.

The site is typically approached from the Angkor road network and is experienced as a landscape monument rather than a compact built complex; seasonal water levels and surrounding rice fields alter its appearance through the year.

Constructed during the Angkor period as part of large-scale hydraulic works, the East Baray functioned both for irrigation and as a symbolic water reservoir linked to state temples. Over centuries it silted and its water management function changed, but the central temple and embankments remain as the main archaeological evidence.

Situated east of the main Angkor temple group in Siem Reap province, the baray lies within the Angkor archaeological landscape and is accessed from roads radiating out from the core sites.

• Scale and dimensions: Measures roughly 7.5 kilometres east-west and about 1.8 kilometres north-south, covering an area of around 11 square kilometres and representing one of the largest artificial reservoirs of the Angkor period.
• Notable feature: The central island hosts the East Mebon temple, which was built on dry land when the baray was filled and is now surrounded by seasonal water or rice cultivation depending on the time of year.

What to See#

• East Mebon: A temple complex built on an artificial island at the centre of the reservoir, constructed in the 10th century and notable for its stone elephant and lion sculptures and tiered terraces.
• Baray embankments: Long earthen embankments that define the baray’s rectangular outline and survive as raised banks visible across the floodplain; these embankments are the primary archaeological remnants of the original hydraulic works.

From Siem Reap town center the East Baray is roughly 6-12 km east (depending on which part one wants to visit). Tuk-tuks take 15-30 minutes; bicycles are a popular way to explore the embankments. The Baray is close to several lesser-visited temple groups - ask a tuk-tuk driver for the best loop for light and birds.

• Cycle the flat road along the berm to feel the scale - local cyclists often ride the full loop
• Bring sunscreen and water; there's almost no shade along the reservoir banks
• Watch for local fishermen and ox-cart crossings - the Baray is still integrated into agricultural life

The East Baray is the now-dry artificial lake of Yasovarman I, once arguably as impressive a sight as the still partially filled West Baray. While founding the new kingdom of Yasodharapura around the turn of the 10th century, Yasovarman followed tradition: first building the ancestral temple Lolei within his father’s baray at the former capital of Hariharalaya, then raising his state temple, Bakheng, and finally his own vast public waterworks, the Yasodharatataka, known today as the East Baray.

An inland sea. Referred to by the 13th-century Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan as the “Eastern Lake”, the reservoir covered more than 12 million square metres, roughly 7 by 2 kilometres, and once held up to 40 million cubic metres of water. Its construction required labourers to divert the Siem Reap River, which now runs parallel to the northern edge of the dry basin before turning sharply south. Scholars still debate the barays’ purpose, but they seem to have served both spiritual and practical ends, as cosmological representations of the oceans encircling Mount Meru and as reservoirs for dry-season irrigation.

Silt and afterlife. The system’s undoing was siltage: the Siem Reap River deposited great quantities of sand, debris and gravel each year, until after some four centuries the dykes could be raised no higher and the whole network was replaced by earth and stone dams. Today crops grow on the dry, fertile lake bed, and the outlines of the old dykes are still visible from the air. At its centre a hill, once an island, carries the East Mebon temple, reached by an elevated road that passes through a break in the retaining wall and runs between the rice fields.