01The temple dayAngkor Wat Sunrise or Sunset Tour with Guide from Siem ReapSunrise or sunset with a guide, the causeway gods on the way in.
02The lake daySunset tour of Kampong Phluk stilts home village on the Tonle SapStilt houses over the Tonle Sap, an hour and a half out of town.
Angkor took six centuries to build. You have three days.
Which sunrise start is worth a four o’clock alarm. What a tuk-tuk day inside the park costs. Whether Beng Mealea earns the drive out. Reviews of every tour you can book in Cambodia.
03
04One day at Angkor, or three. That is the whole decision.
The park is forty square kilometres and the pass is sold by the day, so the question is never which temple. It is how many mornings you are willing to start in the dark, and how far out of Siem Reap you are willing to drive.
The grand circuit, small groupFull-Day Temples of Angkor Small Group Tour
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,003 reviews · from $19
Start before fiveThe pond in front of the west gate, then the temples while it is cool.
The one full dayAngkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm in a loop, back for a late lunch.
Two days, both circuitsThe small circuit, then the far one, with the crowds behind you.
The temples out of townCollapsed galleries and jungle an hour and a half east.
All 244 temple days →
Siem Reap first. Then work south, or take the boat.
Almost every Cambodian itinerary starts under the temples and ends somewhere hotter and slower: a capital on a river junction, a bamboo track through the rice, pepper farms behind the coast. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
The Tonle Sap runs backwards for half the year.
When the Mekong rises in June it shoves the river into reverse and the lake swells to five times its dry-season size. Whole villages are built for it, on stilts or on pontoons, and the boats out to them leave from a jetty an hour from the temples.
The days out more travellers take than any other in Cambodia.
Every Cambodian tour we have reviewed →Eight tours carry more of this country’s travellers than the rest of the catalogue put together, and seven of them start in Siem Reap.
1
Angkor Wat Sunrise or Sunset Tour with Guide from Siem Reap
See Angkor Wat at sunrise or sunset, plus Bayon, Ta Prohm, and Banteay Kdei with a guide, transport, water, and cold towels.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Angkor Wat: Small-Group Sunrise or Sunset Tour
from $15
3
Kampong Phluk Floating Village Tour by Boat
from $20
4
Sunset tour of Kampong Phluk stilts home village on the Tonle Sap
from $21
5
Kampong Phluk Floating Village Tour with Boat
from $19
6
Full-Day Angkor Wat Guided Tour with Sunset
from $15
7
Angkor Wat Sunrise tour with Small – Group and Guide tours
from $14
8
Angkor Wat Highlights and Sunrise Guided Tour from Siem Reap
from $23
Sunrise puts the towers in silhouette. Sunset puts them in gold.
The famous shot is the reflection pond at first light, shared with a few hundred other people and their phones. The quieter answer is the west gate late in the day, when the sandstone goes orange and the tour buses have gone back for dinner. Both are on this site, priced.
Every Angkor sunrise start →
A day out in Cambodia, priced from the bottom up.
Everything on the site, cheapest first. The country is cheap enough that the interesting question is not what you can afford, it is what the extra thirty dollars actually buys you.
Group tuk-tuk days inside the park, the boat out to the stilt villages, market walks and the circus.
Cooking classes, the far temples, two-day passes and the Kulen waterfall run with lunch.
Private guides and drivers for a whole day, multi-day temple runs and the long drives east.
Phnom Penh sits where three rivers meet, and asks more of you than Siem Reap.
A silver-floored pagoda inside the palace walls, a market under a yellow art deco dome, and a riverfront that fills up at six when the heat finally breaks. Most visitors give it two days, and spend one of them out at Choeung Ek.
- 1Sunset Cruise with Unlimited Beers & BBQ Buffetfrom $9
- 2Aroma Therapy Massage, Relaxation therapeutic aromatherapy oil massages.from $38
- 3Sunset Cruise with Unlimited Beer &Fruit platterfrom $9
Tuol Sleng and the killing field at Choeung Ek are half a day, usually taken together and usually in the morning. Guides work from the site’s own records and audio guides are available in ten languages.
Memorial site visits from Phnom Penh
Three things that happen in Cambodia and nowhere else.
Temples and beaches run the length of southeast Asia. A train made of a bamboo pallet, a court dance kept alive by a handful of surviving teachers, and pepper graded by the colour it was picked at do not.
The Bamboo Train
A norry is a bamboo pallet on two axles with a small engine bolted to the back, invented to move rice and people along a rail line nobody was maintaining. One track, both directions: when two meet, the lighter load is lifted off and put back on behind. The original run out of O Dambang was pulled up for a new line, and the trip now runs on a rebuilt track near the bat caves.
- 1Tuk-Tuk, Bamboo Train, Killing/Bat Caves, Sunset★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,436 reviews
- 2Afternoon tour by tuk tuk to bamboo train,bat cave,killing cave,countryside.★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 344 reviews
- 3Bamboo Train, Bat Cave, Killing Cave by Tuk Tuk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 182 reviews
Apsara
The dancers you see carved in their thousands on the Angkor walls are apsara, and the dance survived into the twentieth century as a royal court form. Most of its teachers died between 1975 and 1979, and what is performed today was rebuilt in the eighties by the few who were left. The finger positions are the vocabulary: each one is a word, and the whole story is told with them.
- 1Apsara Show Including Dinner & Hotel Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 615 reviews
- 2Apsara Dance Show and Dinner with Hotel Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 425 reviews
- 3Apsara Dance Show & Dinner with Tuk-Tuk Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 254 reviews
Kampot Pepper
The quartz-heavy soil behind the Kampot coast grows pepper the French colonial kitchens bought by the sack, and the vines are still trained on poles by hand. Green, black, red and white are the same berry taken at four different moments. Farms sit half an hour out of town on the Kep road, and most of them will let you taste all four before you buy.
- 1Pepper Farm Tours, Salt, Lake & Phnom Chhngok Temple★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 432 reviews
- 2Full-day Countryside Tour with Pepper Farm and Kep★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 245 reviews
- 3Tuk Tuk Trip to Pepper Farm, Kep, Crab Market & More★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 143 reviews
Four Cambodian bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast for the same morning. These four run on ticket offices, water levels, one-way mountain roads and a tent that only holds a few hundred people.
- 01Angkor Wat Sunrise or Sunset Tour with Guide from Siem ReapThe Angkor pass is sold at one office on the road out of town, not at the temples, and a sunrise group leaves in the dark. Buy the pass the afternoon before.
- 02Phare: The Cambodian Circus Show in Siem ReapOne performance a night, under a big top that seats a few hundred. In high season it goes days ahead.
- 03Kulen Waterfall Join-in Tour (local Picnic lunch)The mountain road is single lane and runs one way by the clock: up in the morning, down after midday. Miss the window and the day is gone.
- 04Kampong Phluk Floating Village Tour by BoatWater level decides this trip. At the end of the dry season the boats cannot always reach the stilt houses, and the route changes with the month.
The rain arrives at four, hard, and stops in an hour.
Green season storms are heavy and short, and they do two useful things: they fill the Tonle Sap so the boats reach the flooded forest, and they empty the temples. Plan the morning outdoors and give the afternoon to a kitchen, a workshop or a market hall with a roof on it.
By place · temple town, capital, coast
By kind of day · temple, boat, kitchen or road
Siem Reap, the lake, Battambang, the capital, then the coast.
The newest Cambodian tour reviews.
Everything added lately →
Kulen Mountain With Ticket included Plus Banteay Srei Temple Tour
Read our review →
One Day Private Guide Tours History in Phnom Penh Incl. admission
Read our review →
Private Siem Reap Airport Transfer to hotel in town
Read our review →
1-Day private Angkor Temple Tour with Sun Rise by Tuk Tuk from Siem Reap
Read our review →
From HCM: Mekong Delta Floating Market 3days exit Phnom Penh
Read our review →
War Museum, Killing Field, and APOPO Hero RATs Tour
Read our review →
Ground Transfer/ Minivan/ Phnom Penh to Siem Reap
Read our review →
