Angkor in the Rains: The Season Everyone Avoids and Photographers Choose

The phrase "rainy season" does a lot of damage here, because it makes people picture British drizzle for a fortnight.

What happens at Angkor from roughly June to October is: hot bright mornings, cloud building through the middle of the day, and one heavy hour in the afternoon - genuinely heavy, streets running with water - and then it stops and the evening is cool and clear. Some days it does not rain at all. September and October are the wettest and even then an all-day washout is the exception, not the pattern.

So the working day barely changes. You are at the temples from 05:00 anyway because of the heat, you are off the stone by noon anyway, and the rain arrives while you are at the pool.

What you get in exchange is substantial:

The moats and reflecting pools are full. In March the northern pool at Angkor Wat can be low or drained, and there is no reflection at all. In September there is.

The stone goes green. Moss on the laterite, moss on the terraces, and the forest around Ta Prohm and Preah Khan at full saturation.

The crowds thin out sharply, and rooms are 30-50% below peak.

The people who know this site best mostly shoot it in the wet months, for reasons worth understanding even if you only have a phone.

Skies with structure. A dry-season sunrise is often an empty pale blue that photographs as nothing. Monsoon cloud catches colour and gives the towers something to sit against. It can also kill the sunrise completely - that is the gamble.

Overcast is the best light at [Ta Prohm](/cambodia/siem-reap/ta-prohm-tomb-raider-temple), by a wide margin. On a bright day the shaded galleries and blazing courtyards exceed what any sensor handles and you get black roots or a white sky. Cloud fixes that.

Wet stone saturates. Sandstone goes warm, moss goes vivid, and the whole park stops looking grey.

Reflections in the moats, the barays and every puddle on the causeways.

Empty frames. The 06:30 half-hour when the sunrise crowd leaves for breakfast is emptier still in September, and the outlying temples can be genuinely deserted.

More on angles and timings in the photography guide.

This is not a free lunch and the honest list is short but real.

Wet sandstone is slippery. The upper-level stairs at Angkor Wat and the rubble at Beng Mealea are the two places it matters. People do fall.

Unsealed roads to the outlying temples get difficult. Koh Ker and Preah Vihear are surfaced now, but the last stretches and the tracks around Beng Mealea can be soft. A car rather than a tuk-tuk, and a driver who will say no.

Cycling is workable between showers and unpleasant during one. Fine as a plan, bad as a commitment - see cycling Angkor.

Mosquitoes are worse. Dengue is present in Cambodia; repellent at dusk, covered ankles, and take it seriously around the lake.

Humidity fogs camera glass when you come out of air conditioning. Let the kit acclimatise.

Some boats stop. Paradoxically this is the season the Tonle Sap is at its best, but a severe storm cancels a day on the water.

Carry a poncho, not an umbrella. The wind comes with the rain.

June - the turn. Hot and humid with the first real storms. Still plenty of dry days.

July to August - established wet season, an afternoon hour most days, everything green. European summer keeps hotels moderately busy regardless, so this is not the cheapest window despite the weather.

September - the wettest month and the quietest. Lowest rates of the year. This is the connoisseur's month if you can take the gamble.

October - still wet, and the Tonle Sap is at maximum. The stilt villages stand in water, the flooded forest is navigable by boat, and the lake is several times its dry-season size. If the lake is a reason you are coming, October is the month.

November - the rains stop, the landscape is still green, the lake is still full, and peak pricing has not fully arrived. Widely the best month of the year at Angkor, and it is the tail of the wet season rather than the start of the dry one.

Who should come in the rains: photographers, anyone on a budget, anyone who hates crowds, and anyone who specifically wants the floating villages. Who should not: a once-in-a-lifetime trip with fixed dates and no slack, where a washed-out sunrise cannot be tried again tomorrow.