Transport, Travel and Safety in the Khmer World

In the lowlands of present-day Cambodia, water shaped both where people could live and how they traveled. Zhou Daguan, a Chinese envoy who observed the Khmer capital at Angkor in 1296–1297, described the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) rising during the rains until shoreline residents moved to higher ground. In the dry season, he said, the lake became shallow enough for only small boats. The route that suited a traveler therefore depended on the month, the distance and the load.

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Moving people and goods on land

Zhou describes a palanquin, a carried seat made from a curved wooden pole. A hook set near each end held a length of cloth folded into a sling, and two bearers carried the seated passenger. A separate, broad canopy decorated with colored silk followed, carried by four men. For a long journey, Zhou lists elephants, horses and carts. He notes that horses had no saddles and elephants no riding benches.

Boats and connected waters

Zhou distinguishes large plank-built boats from smaller dugouts. Builders shaped hard timber boards with axes, fastened them with iron nails, then covered the boats with leaves held by palm slats. To seal the joints, they used fish grease mixed with mineral lime. The large boats moved by oars. For a smaller craft, builders hollowed a tree trunk, softened it over a fire and pushed wooden braces into it to spread its sides. The result was broad in the middle and tapered at both ends; it held several people and was also rowed rather than sailed.

The distinction mattered on the Great Lake. During the dry half of the year Zhou describes, the water was accessible only to small boats, while seasonal flooding submerged trees and pushed residents away from the shore. He places the rains in lunar months four through nine and the dry season in months ten through three. At Bayon, the state temple at the center of Angkor Thom, the southern gallery depicts boats and fishing on Tonle Sap, showing how the lake carried daily activity as well as the forces that fought across it.

Crossings and stopping places

Mitch Hendrickson traces routes to pre-Angkorian activity in the sixth to eighth centuries, before the Angkorian period. Formal development accelerated in the eleventh century, likely under Suryavarman I, with further roadside construction under Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The road system developed from earlier paths and regional centers.

A dated inscription gives a more precise picture of planned travel. The Preah Khan stele of 1191 lists three routes with 121 vahni-griha, or fire shrines. Seventeen of the shrines correspond to the northwestern route between Angkor and Phimai, a city in present-day Thailand. Hendrickson’s survey finds the roadside shrine structures spaced about 14 to 15 kilometers apart, roughly half a day’s travel. Zhou, writing a century later, also mentions places of rest on major roads and compares them to relay stations. Together these records document marked stages and places to rest along major routes.

Water tanks and bridges solved different problems. Hendrickson maps rectangular, earthen-walled trapeang at intervals of roughly 1.5 to 2.5 kilometers along roads. Because people and animals needed water during the dry season, he interprets their roadside position as part of travel infrastructure; their exact construction dates are difficult to fix because soil tanks could be dug out and reused. Across streams and rivers, builders used bridges of corbelled laterite, a reddish building stone. Each course projected a little farther over the water than the one below, until the blocks met above the channel. The bridges span major river crossings as well as small culverts, helping keep routes passable across wet ground.

Disruption and protection

Routes carried armies as well as passengers and provisions. Bayon’s outer galleries, carved in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, show a military procession with horsemen, elephant riders and supply carts. A southern gallery scene depicts Khmer forces fighting by boat on Tonle Sap against Cham troops from Champa, a coastal kingdom in present-day central Vietnam. Nearby carvings show warriors leaving boats and others fleeing beside a pond. The reliefs show how armies moved by land and water in the same landscape where people traveled and worked.

Zhou’s account of theft describes a person who caught a thief as able to seize and assault the suspect. When an accused person denied stealing, Zhou says, a pot of oil was boiled and the accused plunged in a hand. In the procedure he describes, a burned hand was taken as proof of guilt, and an unburned hand as proof of innocence.