The fact that, in the account of his voyage, Tcheou Ta-Kouan did not describe the royal palace as living thing built of rock - that he indicates for the inconsistent monuments - suggests that it was rather constructed in well-ventilated-weight materials subsequent to all subsidiary dwelling structures. The tiles of the kings private dwellings, he wrote, are in as well as, even if new parts of the palace are covered as soon as pottery tiles, ocher in colour... Long colonnades and quirk in corridors stretch away, without grand symmetry... The dwellings of the princes and of the important officers are quite oscillate in size and design from those of the people. The associates temple and the main hall are covered later tiles... Straw thatch covers the dwellings of the commoners - they would not dare to use tiles.... It is certain that the stone buildings we see at Angkor, considering an architecture that obeys rigorous and constant rules of order and symmetry, served purely monumental ends. Satisfying unaided requirements of longevity and steeped then symbolism, they merely indicate the framework of the capital and suburban settlements that were otherwise built from perishable materials - and an undoubtedly religious framework, back each element represents but a blossoming of sanctuaries responding to the multiplicity of gods and divinities. Other than these saintly dwellings were not considered worthy to survive. The stone monuments are temples in hence far and wide-off as they are monuments raised in honour of the divinities. Their number and size may perhaps wonder, seeming disproportionate to the place occupied by the city and its suburbs and to the density of the population - everything the religious fervour of the Khmer. With our western mentality we are naturally sloping to see in all religious buildings the equivalent of our churches and cathedrals that answer to a showing off of general faith - to the pious sentiments of the masses - that were the action of a population who met there in order to pray and to practise the rituals of their religion.