Exploring Cambodia

Discover the rich cultural tapestry and dramatic history of Cambodia, from the bustling energy of Phnom Penh to the majestic temples of Angkor in Siem Reap.

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DAY 1 · PHNOM PENH ARRIVAL

Cross Phnom Penh by Cyclo to Wat Phnom

The cyclo is Phnom Penh's oldest form of urban transport — a wide low passenger seat at the front, a single cyclist pedalling behind. You'll take one in the afternoon, after the heat has lifted, on the way to Wat Phnom. The temple sits atop the small artificial hill that gave the capital its name, founded in 1373 by a wealthy widow who is said to have found four bronze Buddhas washed up on the riverbank. It remains one of the city's most important pagodas. The pace is slower than walking — which is exactly the point.

See the Silver Pagoda's Diamond-Encrusted Buddha

Phnom Penh's Royal Palace is the working residence of the King of Cambodia — not a museum, but a living monarchy. You walk the outer grounds past the Throne Hall and the Moonlight Pavilion, then enter the Silver Pagoda, named for the five thousand silver tiles paving its floor. At the centre stands the reason you've come: a life-sized Maitreya Buddha cast in ninety kilograms of solid gold, encrusted with 2,086 diamonds. The largest diamond catches the light at his forehead. It is one of the most remarkable expressions of Cambodian Buddhism, and it has been quietly here for over a century.

DAY 2 · PHNOM PENH SIGHTSEEING

Bear Witness at S-21 and the Killing Fields

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime emptied Cambodia's cities and killed an estimated 1.7 to 2.2 million people. Two sites in Phnom Penh bring that history into focus. Tuol Sleng — the high school the regime converted into the S-21 prison — held around 17,000 people. Almost none came out. Choeng Ek, fifteen kilometres south, is where prisoners were taken to be executed; a glass stupa there now holds more than five thousand of their skulls. On most days, one of the few S-21 survivors sits in the courtyard. He will answer your questions. Some places ask you to bear witness.

Browse the Russian Market for Khmer Crafts

The Russian Market — its Khmer name is Toul Tumpong — got its nickname in the 1980s when Russian expatriates were among the few foreigners shopping there, and the name stuck even though most Russians left long ago. It is one of Phnom Penh's most rewarding markets for the kind of objects Cambodia is quietly known for: silk in every weight and weave, silver jewellery, hand-cut woodcarvings, traditional musical instruments, and a vast inventory of antique and reproduction Buddha images. The aisles are narrow. The vendors will bargain. You can spend an hour or three.

Cruise the Chaktomuk Where Four Rivers Meet

Phnom Penh sits at a remarkable river confluence. The Mekong flows in from the north and continues south, the Tonle Sap River arrives from the great lake to the west, and the Bassac splits off to the south-east. All four meet directly in front of the Royal Palace, in a swirl the Khmers call Chaktomuk — ‘four faces’. What makes it more unusual: the Tonle Sap reverses direction each summer when the Mekong floods. You'll board a wooden boat at sunset, with a drink at the rail, and cruise the confluence as the palace lights come on along the bank.

DAY 3 · PHNOM PENH → SIEM REAP

Watch Khmer Artisans at Work at Chantiers Ecoles

After the Khmer Rouge years, much of Cambodia's craft tradition was nearly lost — artisans killed, knowledge unrecorded, supply chains broken. Les Artisans d'Angkor was founded in 1999 to rebuild it. The school and ateliers in Siem Reap train young Cambodians, many from rural backgrounds, in silk weaving, stone and wood carving, lacquering, and the gilded relief work used on royal architecture. You walk through the workshops as masters and apprentices work side by side. The shop afterwards sells what they make. Buying here directly supports the artisans you've just watched.

Receive a Buddhist Blessing for the Journey Ahead

In Cambodian Buddhist tradition, a blessing ceremony marks the beginning of any meaningful journey — and travellers are welcomed to receive one. You'll arrive by tuk-tuk at a working pagoda outside Siem Reap. Three monks in saffron robes sit waiting, with a small brass bowl of water between them. You sit cross-legged on a woven mat as the chanting begins. A brush of flowers is dipped in the water and flicked gently across your forehead — three times — and a red cotton thread is tied around your wrist as a token of protection and safe passage. It is short. It is sincere.

Watch Battambang's Circus Tell a Khmer Story

Phare Ponleu Selpak — meaning ‘the brightness of the arts’ — is a free arts school founded in 1986 by Cambodians who began teaching art to children traumatised by the Khmer Rouge years. Today it educates more than a thousand young people, most from disadvantaged backgrounds, in visual art, music and circus. Their performance company, Phare Circus, runs nightly shows in a small red big top in Siem Reap. The storytelling is athletic and wordless, drawing on Khmer folk tales and contemporary Cambodian history. Every ticket helps fund the school that made these performers possible.

DAY 4 · SIEM REAP · ANGKOR WAT

Cycle the Back Road to Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world, built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple to Vishnu. Most travellers approach it by coach, through the main gate. You'll approach it differently — by bicycle along a quiet back road, with your guide alongside, past rice paddies and water buffalo. The temple reveals itself slowly: first the moat, then the long causeway, then the five sandstone towers rising above the tree line. Those towers have appeared on every Cambodian flag for over a century. You arrive at the temple at a human pace.

Walk Ta Prohm Where Jungle Meets Stone

Ta Prohm was built in the late twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII as a Buddhist monastery and university — at its height it housed more than twelve thousand people. When the Khmer empire collapsed in the fifteenth century, the jungle took it back. Today the temple is famous for the massive silk-cotton trees that have grown through and around its sandstone — roots draped over doorways, trunks splitting walls — left deliberately unrestored so the encounter between forest and architecture remains intact. The 2001 Tomb Raider film made the temple instantly recognisable. The reality holds up.

Quad Bike Through Siem Reap's Rice Country

Beyond Angkor's famous temples, Siem Reap province is largely rice-growing country — a landscape of paddies, palm trees, and small farming villages. You'll spend three hours after lunch riding a quad bike through it, with a guide who knows the back tracks. The route passes water buffalo, working monasteries, and roadside shrines. The highlight is a small ninth-century Khmer temple — built two hundred years before the great Angkor Wat began — that sits largely unvisited on a back lane. There's no ticket office, no queue. The province feels as it has for generations, well beyond the tour-bus routes.

DAY 5 · ANGKOR THOM & THE OUTER TEMPLES

Marvel at the Pink Sandstone of Banteay Srei

Banteay Srei is widely considered the most exquisite temple in Cambodia — twenty-five kilometres northeast of the main Angkor complex, smaller than its neighbours, and carved entirely from pink sandstone. It was completed in 967 AD by a Brahmin minister rather than a king, which may explain why the relief work — depicting scenes from the Hindu epics with a delicacy and precision found nowhere else in Khmer art — was always its purpose rather than its decoration. The modern name means 'Citadel of the Women.' The original name was Tribhuvanamahesvara — 'the great lord of the threefold world.'

Stand Among the Stone Faces of the Bayon

At the centre of Angkor Thom — the great walled city that succeeded Angkor Wat as the Khmer capital in the late 12th century — stands the Bayon, a temple unlike any other in the world. Fifty-four towers carry over two hundred carved stone faces, each four to seven metres high, gazing serenely in every direction. They were built by King Jayavarman VII, Cambodia's great Buddhist king, and historians remain divided on whom they represent: the king himself, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, or perhaps both. You'll enter through the South Gate's causeway of gods and demons. The temple does not disappoint.

Sail the Royal Waterways of Angkor at Sunset

The moats and canals of Angkor were built in the 12th century to serve as both transport and irrigation for the Khmer capital. They have outlasted the city. The Kongkear is a traditional Khmer boat — long, low, with a woven palm roof — that runs along these waterways inside the archaeological park, at a pace the kings themselves would have known. You'll board in the late afternoon with a cool towel and a drink, glide past the walls of Angkor Thom, and tie up near the Great Wall for hi-tea at sunset. Few visitors take this route. Few experiences feel more royal.

DAY 6 · COUNTRYSIDE EXPLORATION

Travel by Ox-Cart to a Khmer Family Lunch

Rural Cambodia still moves at the speed of the ox-cart, particularly in the villages around Siem Reap, where many families farm rice as their grandparents did. You'll ride one through a working village — sitting in a wooden cart under a thatched roof, drawn by a pair of patient oxen — to a family home where lunch is being prepared. The food is whatever was in the garden that morning: clear soup with morning glory, fish from the village pond, rice from the field next door. Your guide translates. You eat as a guest of the family, not as a tourist.

Meet the Hero Rats Clearing Cambodia's Mines

APOPO is a Belgian non-profit that trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines by scent — light enough that they cannot set the mines off, but with a sense of smell precise enough to find what metal detectors miss. The Cambodia centre sits on the outskirts of Siem Reap. Cambodia is one of the world's most heavily mined countries, a legacy of three decades of war, and the HeroRATs have helped clear millions of square metres of land. You'll meet the rats, see them work, and hear how each one is named.

Eat Your Way Through Siem Reap by Tuk-Tuk

Khmer cuisine sits between Thai and Vietnamese traditions but has its own distinct character — less chilli-forward, more reliant on fresh river fish, fermented prawn paste, and the kaffir lime leaf. The best place to understand it is on the street. A guide will take you by tuk-tuk through Siem Reap's evening market routes to eight or ten small stalls, ordering as locals do. You'll try num banh chok (rice noodles with green fish curry), grilled snakehead on banana leaf, nom krok coconut pancakes, and seasonal tropical fruit. Most stalls are family-run, often by the same families for decades.

DAY 7 · DEPARTURE · TONLE SAP

Glide Through Tonle Sap's Floating Village

The Tonle Sap is Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake — and one of the world's most productive fisheries, providing a major share of Cambodia's protein. Its water level rises and falls by around ten metres each year, depending on whether the Mekong is feeding into it or draining out. Along its shores, entire communities have built floating villages — homes, schools, police stations and shops all lashed to barrels and bamboo — that simply move as the water level changes. You'll head out on a private boat for your final morning, forty minutes from shore, to drift alongside one of them.

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