Wat Tangyu (Phnom Tbeng)

Also recorded as Wat Tang You and “Rock Top Pagoda”, it’s one of Cambodia’s most unique pagodas, built atop a rock monolith, and a popular hiking area featuring several waterfalls on the eastern side of the massive Phnom Tbeng Meanchey of Preah Vihear.

The site is reached via the northeast side of Phnom Tbeng where it’s signposted Taing You Community Protected Area Center (Khmer: ផ្លូវចូលស្នាក់ការសហគមន៍តំបន់ការពារធម្មជាតិតាំងយូរ). This trail leads past a stall selling coffee, drinks etc and also where you can park your moto/car safely and walk over the bridge, through the entrance to a meditation center, and around to the left where there’s a ticket booth and entrance to the mountain. At either the coffee shop or the entrance they may be able to help with guides and porters should you need them (unsure if they have multilingual guides or not). The entrance fee at the time was $1 while the sign seemed to indicate $10. There is also a shrine here to the legendary monk of Mount Tbeng, Monk Soung.

From the entrance up to the top of the plateau, it’s around a two-hour hike with it being quite steep after the midway point. It’s a beautiful natural trail up and at the time of visiting (01/23) they are installing new wooden stairs which should be complete in a month or two. It’s signposted along the route letting you know how far you’ve come and around mid-way up there is a small plateau with a rest point and seating. As mentioned, after that it gets steeper. My colleague Chanthim handled this much better than me!

At the top plateau, it’s a flat trail from here to the pagoda, around 5 km. You may be able to hire (or share) a ride on a farm tractor, from what I gathered, most people depart from this point in the morning (around nine?) and return in the late afternoon, so be early if you want to hitch a ride which is $2.50 pp each way if sharing. We’d missed that so, it was by foot we’d go.

The trail is signposted along the route, again marking how far you have come. Kandol Sor Waterfall can also be reached from this trail but we’d head straight for the pagoda. Eventually, we reached the site and a foot trail heads down to the small but quite scenic waterfall where there is a couple of huts and seating areas and then a short trail to the quite amazing pagoda.

The monks believe the site to have a quite ancient heritage, pre-dating Angkor, while the wooden pagoda we see atop the rock monolith today is certainly from more recent times. Around the base of the rock monolith, there are several inscriptions and carvings. It’s worth mentioning, across Phnom Tbeng several inscriptions, hermitage/cave dwellings, and carvings have been recorded with studies ongoing I believe. From here, you can also follow the stream 1km north to another waterfall and 300m south to another. Some way to the southeast of the pagoda is Preah Bat, or Buddha’s footprint.

We met a wonderful local family here, and full merit to them as they’d brought with them a bag of rice, oil, soy etc for the monks, they also let us share their tractor ride for the 5km journey back to the descent trail which was more than welcomed. Going down is much easier, taking just over an hour.

Some tips: you can also camp up here, but you’ll likely need to run that by the folks at the community center. The rainy season is best if you want to catch the waterfall at full flow although there’s still some water flow in January. Also, you’ll want decent shoes, plenty of water, snacks/lunch, a hat if you going to walk across the plateau to the pagoda, and to pack lightly in consideration of the steep grades. Also, go early if you want to catch a ride at the top, and also fit in the two waterfalls and pagoda in one day.

Khmer/English names of the attractions on the southeast side of Phnom Tbeng

• ព្រះបាត – Preah Bat
• វត្តតាំងយូ – Wat Tang You
• ទឹកធ្លាក់តាំងយូ – Tang You Waterfall
• ទឹកធ្លាក់ចាក់អង្រែតូច – Chak Angre Small Waterfall
• ទឹកធ្លាក់កណ្តុរស – Kandol Sor Waterfall

Rodney Charles LHuillier

Living in Asia for over a decade and now residing in beautiful Siem Reap - Contact via [email protected] - more..