Wat Prasat (Pouk – Siem Reap)

Contemporary monastery and pagoda located on the western side of Siem Reap city that was once the location of an ancient temple site. A collection of ancient temple remains can still be seen on site. It has two lines of heritage, one as a 10th century Angkorian era temple site and another as a Buddhist pagoda which dates back over 100 years at least.

As of July/22, the pagoda was under restoration.

Update 2025

On revisiting, I noticed the original sema of the prior iteration of pagoda/vihara, sema pedestal, and the old wooden beams.

Historical Notes

Vat Prasat (The temple pagoda). It is located about 6 kilometers to the north a little east of Prasat Prei Donghöm. Its huts and its vihara occupy the site of an ancient Brahmanic temple of which only the remains of a group of three small brick sanctuaries, regularly placed on the same north-south line and oriented to the east; razed to the height of the doors, the remaining parts have, however, been preserved and cleared of the debris which encumbered them. These doors are very low and measure only 0.75m by 0.55m of opening, that of the central sanctuary having slightly larger dimensions.

Various sculpted sandstone pieces, obviously from these edifices, were used, with limonite blocks, for the base of the modern vihara; decorative lintels of type III and fragments of statuettes were also collected in a small temporary construction to the east of the vihara.

Pretty moated basins and a rectangular saras to the east surrounded the temple.

Lajonquiere, 1911

Rodney Charles LHuillier

Living in Asia for over a decade and now residing in beautiful Siem Reap. Rodney Charles L'Huillier has spent over seven years in Cambodia and is the author of Ancient Cambodia (2024) and Essential Siem Reap (2017, 2019). Contact via [email protected] - more..