Angkor first, then everything else.
Sunrise over the moat, stilt villages on the Tonlé Sap, pepper terraces above Kep and the bamboo train out of Battambang. What each one is like, what it costs, and where to book it.
Seven bookings that shape a Cambodia week.
First visit or fifth, these are the bookings travellers keep coming back to: the moat at first light, a boat out into Kampong Phluk, a wok in a village kitchen, and the long slow morning at Beng Mealea before the coaches find it.
Angkor Wat: Small-Group Sunrise or Sunset Tour
Angkor Wat sunrise from Siem Reap in a small group, with AC pickup and an English guide for Bayon, Ta Prohm, and Banteay Kdei.
From $15 per person
Read the whole verdict →
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The moat goes gold at ten past six.
The ticket office opens in the dark, the tuk-tuk turns off the airport road, and the towers come out of the dark one at a time while several hundred people stay very quiet. An hour later the crowd thins, the guides start work, and the rest of the park is yours until lunch.
How do you want to do the temples?
One ticket, four hundred square kilometres of ruined city, and about three sensible ways to spend a day in it. Read the three below, settle on the shape that fits your week, then take your pick from what sits behind it.
The 5 a.m. start
Sunrise, then the small circuit
from $18 · 12,109 reviews
Pick-up around half four, the moat in the dark, breakfast beside the causeway once the sky has gone pale, then Bayon and Ta Prohm through the middle of the morning, before the stone starts giving the heat back. It is the most booked shape of day in the country and the light is the whole reason.
Compare the sunrise days →
Both circuits
The full temple day
from $15 · 2,857 reviews
No alarm at four. Start at a civilised hour, take the small circuit before lunch and the big circuit after, and finish up on the terrace at Pre Rup or Phnom Bakheng as the sun drops. The sensible choice with children, or when Angkor gets exactly one day.
See the circuit tours →
By bicycle
Angkor by bicycle
from $35 · 935 reviews
The park is flat, shaded and threaded with lanes the coaches cannot use, which makes a bicycle the honest way through it. Guides ride the back roads between the temples and stop where nobody else does. Around thirty kilometres across a day, at whatever pace you set.
See the cycling days →
Siem Reap does not go quiet.
The park empties at sunset and the town fills up. Apsara dancers in gold and silk, the circus tent on the edge of town where the acrobats trained at a school for street kids, and a tuk-tuk food run that ends with something grilled you will need the name of.
The Tonlé Sap runs the country.
Every summer the Mekong backs up and the lake swells to five times its dry-season size, which is why the villages either float or stand on stilts twelve metres high. Kampong Phluk and the flooded forest are the half day most people book. Go late and the sun drops into open water on the way back.
Rice fields, palm sugar, a wok.
Twenty minutes past the last hotel the tarmac turns red and the countryside starts. Classes that begin at a market stall and end at a table you helped set, bike loops through paddy and lotus ponds, lunch on a wooden platform under the mango trees.
Phnom Penh keeps its own hours.
The riverfront fills at five, the Royal Palace shuts at exactly the wrong time for photographs, and the best hour of the day is spent on a slow boat out where the Mekong and the Tonlé Sap meet. Cross to Silk Island in the morning and the traffic disappears completely.
Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and the landmine museums.
Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia’s cities, and an estimated 1.7 to 2.2 million people died. S-21, the Phnom Penh school used as a prison and interrogation centre, and the killing field at Choeung Ek about fifteen kilometres south of the city are preserved as memorials and open to visitors. Guided visits usually take half a day and are commonly led by a licensed guide or a survivor. Outside Siem Reap and Battambang, further museums record the landmine clearance that followed. Dress modestly, photography is restricted inside parts of S-21, and it is worth leaving the rest of the afternoon free.
Pick your corner of Cambodia.
Siem Reap for the temples. Phnom Penh for the river and the recent past. Battambang for the bamboo train and the art school. Kampot for pepper, salt flats and the road up Bokor.
Twelve different Cambodian days.
Sunrise at a temple, a wok in a village kitchen, a bicycle on a red dirt road, a boat at dusk. Choose the day and the prices are already on the page.
Far enough out to be quiet.
Beng Mealea sits an hour and a half east, still half swallowed by forest and mostly unroped. Koh Ker and its pyramid are two hours north. Kulen has the waterfall and the riverbed carved with lingas. The roads are decent now and all of these get you back for dinner.
How the first three days should go.
Nobody covers Cambodia in a week. The first three days do have an obvious order, though, and this is the one that keeps the temples feeling new and the afternoons out of the worst heat.
Day 1
Angkor at first light
Ticket office at half four, the moat in the dark, then Bayon and Ta Prohm before the stone warms up. Back in town by one for the worst of the heat, out again at four for Pre Rup.
The Angkor day →
Day 2
The lake and the red roads
A morning boat into Kampong Phluk while the water is high, or a bike loop through paddy and lotus ponds when it is not. Afternoon in a village kitchen finding out what fish amok actually takes.
The lake day →
Day 3
East to Beng Mealea
The forest temple, unrestored and largely unroped, ninety minutes out on a good road. Add Koh Ker for the pyramid, or swap the whole day for Kulen and the waterfall.
The forest temple →
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