Come with us to West Baray! Worlds largest hand-dug lake! VLOG - 2024

This is one of our favorite things to do in Siem Reap. Just pack our stuff, jump in a tuktuk and go somewhere interesting to relax, eat and have fun. There are literally thousands of temples and structures to visit within a 25 minutes tuktuk ride away from town. So much more than just Angkor Wat!

So let me tell you a little bit about West Baraj and how this thing is here. Up to 1 000 000 people used to live in this area during the prime of the Angkor Kingdom, and this was one of the biggest cities in the world at the time. Ruins from Cambodias fascinating history can be seen all over this huge area around Siem Reap and West Baray is just another part of that.
The clever Angkor engineers and architckts had a wast network of irrigation channels and reservoirs built, harnessing excess water from the rainy season and distributing it throughout the dry season, abeling them to grow 3 crops per year, instead of just one. A vital key to sustaining such a large population.

The size of this reservoir, and that there were several of these, gives you plenty of ideas on how big this town really was! West Baray is 4.8 by 1,3 miles in size and remains one of the largest man made lakes in the world.

Thank you so much for watching! We really loved going to West Baraj! A relaxing sunday afternoon in the middle of an ancient relic from a lost civilazation! That is Cambodia in a nutshell for you!