Siem Reap, the town beside the temples

What Siem Reap actually is

The honest version: Siem Reap exists in its current form because of Angkor, it has more hotel rooms per visitor than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, and the central few streets around Pub Street are as touristed as anywhere in the region.

The other honest version: two streets away it is a French colonial river town with shophouses, a genuinely good restaurant scene built by chefs who came for a season and stayed, and quiet residential lanes on the east bank where most of our guests end up wishing they had booked another night. Both are true. The trick is knowing which hundred metres you are standing in.

Where in town to stay

Full price bands are on the where to stay page. In short: USD 60 to USD 120 buys a very good room here outside Christmas, and the owner-run boutiques beat the branded hotels until about USD 200.

How many nights, and what to do with the extra one

Three nights is the minimum that makes sense: arrival evening, two full temple days, and a departure. Four is better, and the argument for the fourth night is not another temple.

• The Tonle Sap, between August and December, when the lake is full. Kampong Phluk is 45 minutes away and Kampong Khleang is 90 minutes and much less visited. Both are stilt villages standing in water, not floating houses, and both are worth the drive in the right season and pointless outside it.
• Phare, the Cambodian Circus: a genuinely excellent evening of acrobatics and theatre by graduates of an arts school founded for young people from difficult backgrounds. The one show in Siem Reap we recommend without reservation.
• The Angkor National Museum, for the sculpture that has been moved out of the park for safekeeping, and a good use of the hot hours.
• A cooking class, a bicycle ride through the rice fields west of town, or the Artisans d'Angkor workshop, which is a working silk and stone-carving school rather than a shop with a demonstration attached.
• Banteay Srei plus the Landmine Museum and Kbal Spean, the carved riverbed in the hills, as a single half-day out of town.

Eating, which is genuinely a reason to stay a night

Siem Reap has the best restaurant scene in Cambodia and it did not have one fifteen years ago. Kandal Village and the Wat Bo side are where it lives now.

What to eat: fish amok steamed in banana leaf, which is the national dish and is usually done badly in tourist restaurants and beautifully in three or four places; prahok ktis, a pungent fermented fish dip that divides visitors precisely down the middle; num banh chok, the rice noodle and fish gravy breakfast sold from carts before eight in the morning and gone by ten; and Kampot pepper crab if it is on a menu.

The night market food stalls are fine and safe. The Pub Street restaurants are not where Cambodians eat and the food reflects it.

Getting there, and the airport change

Siem Reap - Angkor International opened in 2023 and replaced the old airport that sat a few kilometres from the temples. The new one is 45 km east of town, which means about 55 minutes each way and a genuinely different shape to your arrival and departure days.

Flights come mainly from Bangkok (about an hour), Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and several Chinese cities. From Phnom Penh it is a 45-minute flight or a six to six-and-a-half hour drive; the drive is worth it if you stop at Kampong Thom and the pre-Angkorian towers of Sambor Prei Kuk.

From Bangkok overland, the Poipet border is eight to ten hours door to door and the flight is one. We book the border crossing when people want it, and we tell them honestly that the flight is usually the better use of a holiday day.

Tours based here

Angkor temples, 3 days is the core trip. Remote temples, 5 days uses Siem Reap as a base for Beng Mealea, Koh Ker and Preah Vihear. Every longer route we run starts or ends here.

Questions travellers ask most

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