APAD 208: The Western Baray

A beautiful sunny weather.  Skies covered with thin clouds. Plus the boy who tagged along on a short cruise of the Western Baray.

The Western Baray, or West Baray, is an old, old, old water reservoir and the largest found inside the Angkor Wat complex. Its waters are contained by tall earthen dikes. In the center of the baray is the West Mebon, a Hindu temple built on an artificial island.

Early French experts believed the West Baray to have functioned as a vast holding tank for water that fed irrigation canals in dry times, allowing multiple crops of rice each year. Many later studies, however, theorize that the baray had mainly symbolic functions, serving as a vast earthly depiction of the Hindu Sea of Creation, with the West Mebon temple at its center. (Source)

Up to now, the reservoir is still full of water and has become an attraction drawing mostly local crowd (and sometimes, foreign tourists, too) for swimming and boat rides.

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