Cambodia food and culture: 11 days, four kitchens
Khmer food is the least understood cuisine in Southeast Asia. It is quieter than Thai, less herbal than Vietnamese, sour rather than hot, and it is built on prahok, a fermented fish paste that is either the foundation of the whole thing or the reason people say they do not like Cambodian food, usual
- Duration
- 11 days
- Pace
- Moderate
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar
- From
- $1,760 per person
This route is for people who want to fix that. Eleven days, four regional kitchens, a working pepper farm, two cooking sessions that start at a market rather than in a kitchen, silk weaving, shadow puppets and a circus school. The temples are here too, because Angkor is the reason Khmer craft exists, but they are two mornings rather than the point.
Who it suits: curious eaters, second-time visitors to Southeast Asia, and anyone who plans a trip around what they will have for lunch.
Your specialist: Osnat Angerman, with our Hanoi office booking the kitchens and the workshops.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Siem Reap. Transfer, an hour from the airport. Dinner at a modern Khmer restaurant, one of the small number in the country doing serious work with regional ingredients, so you start with the ceiling rather than the floor.
Day 2: Angkor, and what it explains. The Bayon and Angkor Thom at opening, then Ta Prohm, with a guide who talks about the bas reliefs as a record of what people ate, farmed and cooked in the twelfth century, because they are. Fish traps, rice harvest, market scenes, a woman turning something on a grill. Afternoon free. Angkor Wat late.
Day 3: The market at five, and lunch you cooked. Psar Leu market before dawn with a Khmer chef, when the fish is still moving and the herbs are being unloaded. You will handle prahok, and you will learn why it is not what you were told. Then a cooking session: fish amok steamed in banana leaf, a green mango salad, and a kroeung, the lemongrass and galangal paste that sits under most of the cuisine. Lunch is what you made. Afternoon off. Evening at Phare, the circus run by the Battambang arts school.
Day 4: Silk and countryside. The silk farm at Puok, where the whole chain from mulberry to loom is in one place and the weaving is genuinely skilled rather than a demonstration. Afternoon in a village north of town for palm sugar, which is boiled down over a fire in an open shed and is one of the essential Cambodian ingredients. Late afternoon free.
Day 5: Siem Reap to Battambang. Three to four hours south. Battambang is the best-preserved colonial town in Cambodia and a working provincial capital, and almost nobody stops. Afternoon walk through the shophouse streets and the covered market.
Day 6: Battambang, rice, fish and circus. Morning in the surrounding villages: rice paper drying on racks in the sun, fermented fish being packed, sticky rice roasted in bamboo tubes over charcoal at the roadside, and a family distilling rice wine. Afternoon at Phare Ponleu Selpak, the arts school itself rather than the Siem Reap show, where you see the training and the visual arts studios. Bamboo train in the late afternoon if you want a silly half hour, and we will tell you it is a tourist ride rather than transport.
Day 7: Battambang to Phnom Penh. Five hours south-east. Afternoon at the National Museum for the sculpture, then a street food walk through the city in the evening: kuy teav noodles, grilled things, num pang sandwiches in the French bread that is the one good thing the colonial period left behind.
Day 8: Phnom Penh. Tuol Sleng in the morning with the audio guide. It belongs in this itinerary specifically because Cambodian food culture nearly did not survive the period this museum documents: the recipes, the cooks and the master craftspeople were among the people who died, and the revival you have been eating all week is a deliberate reconstruction. Quiet afternoon. Evening at a training restaurant that takes young Cambodians through professional kitchen apprenticeships.
Day 9: Phnom Penh to Kampot. Three hours south-west. Afternoon at a pepper plantation, where black, red and white Kampot pepper all come off the same vine at different ripeness and are dried differently, which explains why they taste nothing alike. Dinner on the river.
Day 10: Kampot and Kep. Salt fields in the morning, then Kep for crab, which is cooked with green Kampot peppercorns still on the stalk and eaten at a plastic table above the water. It is the best single dish in Cambodia. Afternoon free. Evening cooking session at a river house near Kampot with the day’s market.
Day 11: Kampot to departure. Two hours to Phnom Penh airport on the expressway.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout, private air-conditioned car with driver on every transfer and site day, licensed guides on five days, two full cooking sessions with market shopping, the pepper farm and silk farm visits, the palm sugar and rice paper village morning, the Battambang arts school visit, Phare circus tickets, the street food walk, six dinners including the training restaurant and the Kep crab lunch, the two-day Angkor pass, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hanoi office.
What we would change, and when
- Vegetarian? Entirely workable, and it needs arranging rather than requesting. Prahok and fish sauce are in a great deal of what looks vegetable, so we brief every kitchen in advance and rebuild the cooking sessions around a vegetarian kroeung. Tell us at the proposal stage.
- Want more Angkor? Add a third temple morning for Banteay Srei and lose the Battambang bamboo train. Eleven days becomes twelve if you want both.
- Travelling in the hot season? The market mornings are unaffected and are the best part of the trip. The temple days get shortened and we add a rest afternoon.
- Adding Vietnam? The two cuisines make an excellent pairing and they are genuinely different. Our 21-day route covers three.
Honest notes
Prahok divides people. It is pungent, it is essential, and about one traveller in five decides after one encounter that they would rather it were not in anything. We will not pretend otherwise, and if that is you, the cuisine has plenty of dishes without it and our guides know which.
The bamboo train is a tourist ride on a short section of track. It is fun for twenty minutes. It is not a piece of living transport heritage and we would rather say so.
Day 8 sits oddly in a food itinerary and it is there on purpose. If you would rather not, we replace it with the Royal Palace and a longer street food morning, and nobody will argue with you.
Kep crab is seasonal in quality and the market is at its best in the morning. If your day 10 is a Monday we may reorder the itinerary, because the fishing week has a rhythm and we would rather follow it.
Built by Osnat Angerman, our Southeast and Central Asia specialist, and checked by our Hanoi office before it goes out.
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