Angkor at Sunset: Why Everyone Goes to the Wrong Hill

Phnom Bakheng is the sunset every tour sells, and it is the one to avoid.

It is a genuine hill temple - late 9th century, the first state temple built at Angkor, on a natural rise with a view over the plain and a distant glimpse of Angkor Wat's towers. On paper it is perfect.

In practice: the summit caps the number of visitors allowed up, for conservation reasons, and on a dry-season afternoon the queue at the bottom starts forming in the middle of the afternoon. People spend two hours of their one temple day standing on a path to watch the sun go down shoulder to shoulder with three hundred others.

The view is also not what people expect. Angkor Wat is distant from up there - a small silhouette, not a foreground. What you are looking at is mostly forest canopy, which is lovely and is not the photograph people came for.

It stays open until 19:00 when the rest of the park closes at 18:30, which is the one concrete thing in its favour.

If you are set on it, arrive by 16:00 and accept the wait. Otherwise, read on.

Pre Rup is a 10th-century temple-mountain on the grand circuit, and it is the sunset most guides will take you to if you ask.

The stone does the work. Pre Rup is built largely of laterite and brick rather than the grey sandstone of the later temples. Laterite is rust-red and it takes low sun extraordinarily - in the last half hour the whole structure glows in a way Angkor Wat's grey sandstone never does.

There is no cap and no queue. You walk up when you arrive.

The view is forest to the horizon, with the towers of the temple itself as foreground - which is the shot, rather than a distant silhouette.

It is a climb, steep stone stairs to the upper terrace, and that is the trade. Anyone unsteady should see the mobility guide.

The name means "turning the body" and the temple is traditionally associated with funerary rites, which the guides will tell you and the inscriptions do not confirm. It is a good story and the stone tub in the eastern courtyard makes it stick.

Get there by 17:00 for a 17:45-18:15 sunset depending on the month, and be off the terrace by closing at 18:30.

Srah Srang, the royal bathing pond opposite Banteay Kdei, is the most underrated sunset at Angkor. A stone landing with naga balustrades looks west over 700 metres of open water. You sit on the steps. That is the whole thing, and on a still evening the reflection is better than anything you will get from a hilltop. Almost nobody is there because it is not on the tour scripts.

The West Baray is an enormous artificial reservoir - eight kilometres by two, built in the 11th century and still holding water - on the western edge of the park. Cambodian families come out here at weekends to swim, eat and sit. It is a sunset over open water with a local crowd rather than a tourist one, and it is free.

Angkor Wat's moat, from the western causeway, after the crowds have gone to Bakheng. The light on the water and the towers behind it, with the park emptying around you, and blue hour afterwards which very few people stay for - see the photography guide.

The countryside, five minutes off the temple road: rice fields, sugar palms, and the light doing what it does. A tuk-tuk out at four costs almost nothing.

Phnom Krom, a hill temple towards the Tonle Sap, gives a sunset over the lake. Further out, a climb, and worth it if you are doing the floating villages that afternoon anyway.

The park closes at 18:30. Phnom Bakheng is the exception at 19:00. Guards clear the temples and they mean it, so plan to be walking back at closing rather than still climbing down.

Sunset times run roughly 17:40 to 18:20 across the year - Cambodia is close to the equator so the swing is small, and dusk is short. The light goes quickly once it starts.

Season matters more than the spot. In the dry months the sky is often an empty pale blue that photographs as nothing. In and just after the rains, June to November, there is cloud with structure in it and the colour is far better. The rainy season page makes the full argument.

Your Angkor Pass is checked on the way in as usual, and a sunset does not need a separate ticket.

Take a torch. Coming down Pre Rup's stairs in the dark is the one genuinely risky moment of an Angkor day, and the road back to town is unlit in places if you are cycling.

Mosquitoes arrive with dusk. Repellent before you settle in, not after.

A last practical point: after sunset every vehicle in the park leaves at once. Agree with your driver exactly where he will be, because a car park in the dark with three hundred identical tuk-tuks is its own adventure.