Classic Cambodia in 9 days: Angkor, Phnom Penh and the coast

We build it north to south. Temples first while you are fresh and the mornings feel early anyway, then the capital, then the sea. It works in the other direction too and we flip it when your flights want us to.

Who it suits: first-time visitors to Cambodia and to Southeast Asia, couples and independent travellers who would rather do three places properly than six badly.

Your specialist: Osnat Angerman or Paz Prosianoy, with our Hanoi office handling the ground.

Day by day

Day 1: Arrive Siem Reap. Private transfer from the airport, which is about 30 miles (50 km) east of town and an hour by road. Nothing scheduled. Dinner walking distance from the hotel and an early night, because tomorrow starts before the heat does.

Day 2: Angkor, the small circuit. Out at opening with a licensed guide. The Bayon first, when there are perhaps thirty people among the stone faces rather than three hundred, then Angkor Thom, the Terrace of the Elephants and Ta Prohm with the strangler figs through the masonry. Back to the hotel by eleven for a long, unapologetic break. Out again at half past three for Angkor Wat itself, when the western face is lit properly and the sunrise crowd is asleep. Sunset from Srah Srang, over water, with almost nobody there.

Day 3: Banteay Srei and the northern temples. An hour out of town to Banteay Srei, small, pink and carved better than anything else in the park. Preah Khan on the way back, which is large, half-collapsed and usually empty. Afternoon free. In the evening, Phare, the Cambodian circus, which is run by a genuine arts school from Battambang and is the one performance in Siem Reap we recommend without qualification.

Day 4: The Tonle Sap, then free. Early boat to Kampong Khleang, the stilted village an hour and a half east. We use Kampong Khleang rather than Chong Kneas, which is closer to town and the most visited and least comfortable of the lake villages. Back by lunch. Afternoon free for the Old Market, the silk farm at Puok, or the pool.

If you have flexibility we will swap this day for Beng Mealea, the uncleared jungle temple 90 minutes east. Both are good. Do not try to do both in one day.

Day 5: Fly to Phnom Penh. A 45-minute flight in the late morning. Afternoon at the National Museum, which holds the pre-Angkorian and Angkorian sculpture that gives everything you saw last week its context, then the riverfront where the Tonle Sap meets the Mekong. Dinner in the city, which eats far better than its reputation.

Day 6: Phnom Penh, the hard morning. Tuol Sleng, the school used as security prison S-21, with the audio guide rather than a talking guide. Then Choeung Ek, the killing field outside the city. It takes most of the morning and it is genuinely distressing. We keep the afternoon empty on purpose: the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda if you want structure, or nothing at all if you do not. Either is a reasonable answer to that morning.

Day 7: Phnom Penh to Kampot. Three to four hours south-west, roughly 90 miles (150 km), arriving for lunch. Afternoon on the river. Kampot is a small colonial river town under the Bokor plateau and it does very little, which is the point of putting it here.

Day 8: Kampot and Kep. A pepper farm in the morning, where you will finally understand why Kampot pepper is on menus in Paris, then Kep for crab at the crab market, eaten at a plastic table with the sea underneath you. Afternoon swimming or on Rabbit Island, twenty minutes offshore.

Day 9: Kampot to departure. Two hours to Phnom Penh airport on the expressway, or a longer transfer to Sihanoukville if you are adding island nights. Flight home.

What is included

Accommodation with breakfast throughout, the Siem Reap to Phnom Penh flight, private air-conditioned car with English-speaking driver on every transfer and every temple day, licensed local guides on four days, the three-day Angkor pass bought in your names at the official ticket office, the Tonle Sap boat, all entrance fees on guided days, Phare tickets, a day-by-day document with real drive times and flight numbers, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hanoi office for the whole trip.

What we would change, and when

• Travelling in April or May? We cut the middle of every day out entirely and add a night, so the temple days become mornings and late afternoons with five hours by a pool between them. Nine days becomes ten.
• Want an island instead of the coast? Replace days 7 to 9 with two nights on Koh Rong Sanloem, reached by fast boat from the Sihanoukville port. You lose the pepper farms and the crab.
• Only have a week? Cut the Tonle Sap day and one coast night. We would not cut the third Angkor day, because it is the day that stops the temples blurring into each other.
• Adding Vietnam? Fly out of Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City in 55 minutes, or cross the border by Mekong boat. See our 14-day Cambodia and southern Vietnam route.

Honest notes

We have not put you at the Angkor Wat sunrise pool. Several thousand people stand at that one reflecting pool before dawn, and if there is cloud you have queued in the dark for nothing. If you want it anyway, say so and we will build it in properly with an early breakfast, and we will tell you honestly what it will be like.

Day 6 is heavy. There is no arrangement of a Cambodian itinerary that makes Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek easy, and we would not want one. What we can do is put it in the right place, which is a morning with a soft afternoon behind it and no flight that day.

Cambodia is hot. Not warm, hot, and the heat is cumulative across a week. The reason this itinerary looks light in the middle of the day is that the middle of the day is not usable for four hours in the dry season and not usable at all in April.

Built by Paz Prosianoy, our Southeast and Central Asia specialist, and checked by our Hanoi office before it goes out.

Related

• Cambodia: the complete guide
• Boutique Cambodia in 10 days
• Cambodia and southern Vietnam in 14 days