Prasat Ta Khwai

Prasat Ta Khwai is not currently a normal tourist stop. This Khmer ruin, its construction begun in the 11th century under Khmer kings Suryavarman I and Udayadityavarman II, sits directly on the Thailand-Cambodia border in the Phanom Dong Rak range — the same disputed stretch as the Ta Muen temples — and became a front line during the July-December 2025 Thailand-Cambodia border conflict. Cambodian forces dug trenches around the temple and Thai forces later found it had been used to store weapons; both sides caused damage before Thailand retook the site on 15 December 2025 and a ceasefire followed on 27 December. As of January 2026, the Fine Arts Department confirmed the surrounding area was still heavily mined, with public access barred except for personnel on official duty.

That changed in April 2026, when the Second Army Region and Surin province opened a strictly supervised tourism route: a marked 2.9km trail with seven stops, including the temple itself, the nearby Hill 350 lookout, the Protector of Thailand Monument, and memorial statues for soldiers killed in the fighting. This isn’t an independent visit — you register at Ban Thai Santisuk School in Bak Dai subdistrict, park there, and travel to the site by shuttle pickup truck arranged by local authorities. Live-streaming and climbing on structures are banned, and photography is restricted to marked viewpoints. Visiting hours have changed more than once since the route opened, and by June 2026 it was running weekends only, with daily numbers regularly exceeding the original 1,000-visitor cap.

Watch out: Do not leave the marked concrete pathway anywhere on this site. Confirmed landmines remain in the ground around both the temple and Hill 350 — this is the reason the route is shuttle-only and supervised, not a safety formality.

If you do go, the reward is a genuinely rare sight: laterite gopura gateways and a central sanctuary predating Angkor Wat by roughly a century, now standing inside a still-active military remembrance site. Cambodia calls the same temple Prasat Ta Krabey — both names translate to “Grandfather Buffalo Temple” — a reminder that this ruin has always sat astride, rather than fully within, a single country’s territory.

Insider Tip: Because the schedule keeps shifting with visitor demand, check Surin’s provincial tourism office or the Second Army Area’s public announcements for the current open days and registration process before making the drive out — turning up unannounced with no prior route confirmation risks a wasted trip.

There’s no entry fee reported for the current supervised route. The site is in Surin Province, in the same district as Prasat Ta Muen Thom Archaeological Site, another Khmer ruin along the same contested border stretch — check its own access status separately, as border-zone rules can differ site to site. Surin National Museum in town is a lower-risk way to see Khmer artefacts from this region without the border-zone logistics.