Five days is three nights in Siem Reap and two in Phnom Penh. The gap between them is 315 km on National Road 6, five and a half to six hours by bus or 55 minutes flying, which is about four and a half hours door to door now both airports have moved out of town. Fly in to Siem Reap and out of Phnom Penh.
| Day | Based in | What you do | Getting there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Siem Reap | Arrive, buy the pass, first look at the town | SAI airport to town: 45 km, 45–60 minutes |
| 2 | Siem Reap | Sunrise and the small circuit | 20 minutes to the park |
| 3 | Siem Reap | Banteay Srei, the far temples, or the lake | Banteay Srei 37 km, about 50 minutes |
| 4 | Phnom Penh | Down National Road 6, then S-21 and Choeung Ek | Siem Reap to Phnom Penh: 315 km on National Road 6, 5 |
| 5 | Phnom Penh | The Royal Palace, the museum, and the river | Phnom Penh to Techo International Airport: 20–24 km south, allow 40–50 minutes and more in the evening peak |
Five days is the first length at which Cambodia is a country rather than a temple complex. Three nights in Siem Reap covers Angkor without cramming, and two in Phnom Penh is the minimum that lets you do the Khmer Rouge sites properly and still see the city they sit in.
The move between them is the decision. It is 315 kilometres down National Road 6, five and a half to six hours by bus for a handful of dollars, or 55 minutes in the air. Since both airports moved out of town — Siem Reap's in October 2023 to a site 45 kilometres east, Phnom Penh's in September 2025 to one 20-plus kilometres south — the flight is about four and a half hours door to door. The plane saves you roughly ninety minutes and costs several times as much. Fly if your five days are tight; take the road if you want to see the country between the two cities, which is most of it.
A word on the second half. Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek are not sightseeing. Roughly twelve to twenty thousand people were held at S-21 and about a dozen came out. It is worth going, and it is worth building the day so that you are not going straight from it to a rooftop bar.
A first trip that wants the whole country rather than the postcard, and travellers who want to understand recent Cambodian history, not only the twelfth century.
Land, absorb the 45-minute run in from the airport, and buy the three-day Angkor pass at the Angkor Enterprise office before it closes at 17:30. Tickets are not sold at the temples, and the queue at 04:30 tomorrow is not where you want to discover that.
Siem Reap is much smaller than its reputation. The old market, the river and the Pub Street grid are all inside a twenty-minute walk, and the interesting half is the streets either side of it rather than the strip itself. A first-night street-food walk is the cheapest way to make the other four days better: you learn what to order, which is the actual barrier.
If you would rather do something with the last light, an hour out into the rice fields by tuk-tuk gets you five minutes off the temple road and into villages the circuits never touch. The sugar palm is the national tree and its sap is tapped from the crown twice a day by men who climb a notched pole; the palm sugar in everything you eat that week comes from it.
US dollars are the working currency. Riel appears only as change below a dollar. Torn or heavily marked notes get refused, so bring clean ones.
Out by 04:30 for Angkor Wat, which opens at 05:00. It faces west — the one major Khmer temple that does — which is exactly why the dawn silhouette and the reflection in the northern pool work. Get there before the sky turns, not after.
Spend real time in the outer gallery: about 600 metres of continuous bas-relief, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk on the east side, and a building whose central towers are a model of Mount Meru. The upper terrace enforces covered shoulders and knees at the stairs.
Then Angkor Thom, laid out by Jayavarman VII around 1200 behind eight metres of wall, with the Bayon at its centre and more than 200 enormous faces on its towers. Read the outer galleries, which show markets, a cockfight, childbirth and the war against the Chams rather than gods. Ta Prohm last, roots over the galleries, 12,500 people once attached to it by its own inscription.
The Ta Prohm root queue peaks between 09:00 and 11:00. Preah Khan to the north is the same atmosphere without the line if your guide is willing to reorder the day.
Day three is a fork, and both branches are good. The temple branch runs north-east to Banteay Srei, 37 kilometres out, where the pink sandstone carving is deeper and finer than anywhere else in the park, and on to Beng Mealea, a 12th-century temple on Angkor Wat's scale that was left uncleared and is crossed on walkways over its own collapse.
The water branch is the Tonle Sap. The lake reverses twice a year with the monsoon and the villages on it are built for that: Kampong Phluk's stilt houses stand six to ten metres up, in the water in October and marooned in dust by March. Ask what the lake is doing the month you are there before you book; the same trip in two different seasons is two different trips.
Evening is the last one in Siem Reap, which makes it the one for Phare's circus or a classical Apsara performance. Both are short, both are properly staged, and both are better than the buffet-and-show packages that surround them.
Your three-day pass is valid across a ten-day window, so a lake day between two temple days costs nothing extra. Plan the break in deliberately.
Move in the morning, whichever way you go. The road is 315 kilometres and five and a half to six hours through rice country and roadside markets; the flight is 55 minutes but about four and a half hours door to door once you add two far-out airports. Either way you arrive with an afternoon.
Give that afternoon to Tuol Sleng. It was a Phnom Penh secondary school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into Security Prison 21 in 1975, and the classrooms still hold the iron bed frames and the photographs the regime took of every prisoner on arrival. Of the roughly 12,000 to 20,000 people held there, around a dozen survived.
Choeung Ek is 15 kilometres out, where most of them were taken to be killed, and its memorial stupa holds some 5,000 skulls. The audio guide is narrated in part by a survivor and is the reason most visitors get through it at all. The two together take about half a day. Do not put anything social after them; the riverfront and an early dinner is about the right weight for the rest of the evening.
Neither site suits young children, and both ask you not to photograph inside the cell blocks or the stupa. Take the audio guide at Choeung Ek even if you normally skip them.
The last day is the counterweight to the fourth. The Royal Palace has been the residence of the Cambodian king since 1866 and is still lived in, so the royal apartments are shut and the Throne Hall is seen from outside. In the same compound the Silver Pagoda takes its name from five thousand silver floor tiles, most now covered to protect them, and holds a Buddha of 90 kilograms of gold set with more than two thousand diamonds. Covered shoulders and knees are enforced at the gate.
The National Museum next door has the best collection of Khmer sculpture anywhere, and after three days of looking at these figures in situ it finally makes sense. It closes for lunch, so go in the morning.
Then let the city be a city. Phnom Penh sits where the Mekong, the Tonle Sap and the Bassac meet, and the promenade along Sisowath Quay is where it walks in the evening. The Central Market's art deco dome opened in 1937; the Russian Market, properly Psar Toul Tom Poung, is the one for silver and silk. A tuk-tuk food or street-art run is the easiest way to see the parts between.
The National Museum shuts for lunch and the Royal Palace turns people away at the gate for bare shoulders. Do both in the morning, in that order, with the dress code already sorted.
Itineraries written before 2024 assume you land ten minutes from your hotel. That has not been true for a while. Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport opened on 16 October 2023 about 45 kilometres east of town, replacing the old field that sat right beside the temples. The drive is 45 to 60 minutes in normal traffic and closer to 75 in the rains or at peak hour on National Road 6. Phnom Penh switched to Techo International Airport on 9 September 2025, roughly 20 to 24 kilometres south of the city centre, which is a 40-minute run rather than the 20 the old airport allowed.
Add that up and arrival day is not a sightseeing day any more. It also quietly changes the Phnom Penh to Siem Reap decision: the flight is 55 minutes in the air, but with two far-out airports and check-in either side it is about four and a half hours door to door. The bus down National Road 6 is 315 kilometres and takes five and a half to six hours, costs a fraction, and drops you in the centre of town rather than 45 kilometres from it. On that route the plane barely wins, and if you would rather see the countryside than a departure lounge, the road is the honest choice.
This is the single most useful thing to know before you book anything, and almost every itinerary online gets it wrong. The Angkor Archaeological Park sells three passes: one day for USD 37, three days for USD 62, and seven days for USD 72. The three-day pass does not have to be used on three consecutive days — it is valid on any three days inside a ten-day window from first use, and the seven-day pass runs across thirty days. That changes how you plan. You can do a sunrise day, take a day off for the lake or the countryside, then come back for the far temples, and the pass covers all three. Temple fatigue is real: by the fourth hour of the second straight day, most people stop seeing carvings and start seeing stone. Spreading the same three days over five is free.
Passes are sold by Angkor Enterprise, the state seller, at one ticket office about four kilometres out on the road to the temples. They are not sold at the temple gates, so a driver who says he will sort the ticket at Angkor Wat is wrong and you will be turned back. The office opens at 04:30 for the sunrise crowd and closes at 17:30. Bring your passport; children under twelve are free on it, and there is no student rate, no group rate and no half-day ticket. Buy online at the official site or in person — anyone reselling at a markup is not an agent, they are just a markup.
The dry season runs roughly November to March and is what most people mean by the best time: clear skies for sunrise, comfortable mornings, and the biggest crowds and highest room rates of the year. March to May is the hot season and it is genuinely hot, mid-thirties by late morning, which turns a full temple day into an endurance test. June to October is the rains, usually a heavy hour or two in the afternoon rather than all-day drizzle, and the temples are green, empty and far more photogenic than the brochures admit.
The Tonle Sap is the part nobody factors in. It is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and it reverses direction twice a year — during the monsoon the Mekong pushes water back up the Tonle Sap river and the lake swells several times over, then drains again from about November. That decides what a floating-village trip actually looks like. In September and October the stilt houses at Kampong Phluk stand in water and the boats can reach the flooded forest; by March the same houses are dry sticks six to ten metres up in the air and the channel is a mud track. Neither is wrong, but they are different trips, and a tour photographed in October will not look like your February booking.
The bus is 315 km and 5.5–6 hours for a fraction of the price, and it drops you in the centre of town. The flight is 55 minutes in the air but about 4.5 hours door to door now that both airports sit well outside their cities. On five days the flight buys you roughly ninety useful minutes. Take it if the schedule is tight, take the road if it is not.
Open-jaw is much better than a return. Fly into Siem Reap, out of Phnom Penh, and you never repeat the 315 km. Most regional carriers price the two ends separately anyway, so it rarely costs more.
About half a day for the pair, including the 15 km between them. Allow an hour and a half at Tuol Sleng and the same at Choeung Ek with the audio guide. Most people need the rest of the day to be quiet, so do not schedule anything demanding after.
It is enough for the Khmer Rouge sites, the Royal Palace, the National Museum and an evening on the river, which is the standard first visit. A third night would buy you Koh Dach, the silk island upstream, or Oudong, the royal capital for more than 250 years until 1866. Neither is essential on a first trip.
Siem Reap first. Angkor is what you have the most energy for, and it is better to arrive at the Khmer Rouge sites having already seen what Cambodia built than to do it the other way round. It also means your last day is a short run to a nearer airport.
No. Kampot and Kep are three to four hours south of Phnom Penh, so a coast leg needs eight days minimum to be worth the road. If beaches are the point of the trip, plan for ten.
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