Six days adds Battambang between the two cities: the bamboo train, and millions of bats leaving a cliff cave at Phnom Sampeau at dusk. Three nights Siem Reap, one Battambang, two Phnom Penh. Battambang sits roughly on the line, so the detour costs far less road than it looks like it should.
| Day | Based in | What you do | Getting there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Siem Reap | Arrive, pass, and the town at ground level | SAI to town: 45 km, 45–60 minutes |
| 2 | Siem Reap | Sunrise, Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm | 20 minutes to the park |
| 3 | Siem Reap | The far temples or the lake, then the last Siem Reap night | Banteay Srei 37 km (50 minutes) |
| 4 | Battambang | Down to Battambang for the train and the bats | Siem Reap to Battambang: about 170 km, 3–3 |
| 5 | Phnom Penh | On to the capital, and the Khmer Rouge sites | Battambang to Phnom Penh: about 290 km on National Road 5, roughly 5 hours |
| 6 | Phnom Penh | Palace, museum, market, river | City centre to Techo International Airport: 20–24 km, 40–50 minutes, longer in the evening peak |
Six days is where Cambodia stops being two cities with a road between them. The extra day goes to Battambang, which sits roughly on the line anyway, and it is the day people come home talking about.
Battambang is the second city and the calmest of them: French shophouses along a river, three hours from Siem Reap, and almost no one on the standard circuit stops. Two things there are genuinely worth the detour. The bamboo train, the norry, is a bamboo platform on wheels with a small motor, run down a single track; when two meet, the lighter one is lifted off the rails by hand. And at dusk, millions of wrinkle-lipped bats pour out of a cliff cave at Phnom Sampeau in an unbroken ribbon for about half an hour.
The same hill carries a killing-cave memorial from the Khmer Rouge years, which is the other reason the day works where it sits: it prepares you for Phnom Penh rather than dropping you into S-21 cold.
Second-time visitors, anyone travelling overland rather than flying internally, and travellers who want one place on the trip that is not set up for them.
The run in from Siem Reap-Angkor International is 45 kilometres and 45 to 60 minutes, longer in the rains. Get the three-day Angkor pass at the Angkor Enterprise office before 17:30; it is not sold at the temples and buying it tonight saves a queue at half past four tomorrow.
Use the evening on food rather than sights. Khmer cooking is built on prahok, a fermented fish paste, and on kroeung, the lemongrass, galangal, turmeric and kaffir-lime paste pounded fresh each morning, and it is milder than Thai and sourer than Vietnamese. Fish amok steamed in a banana leaf and lok lak with Kampot pepper are the two dishes to start with.
The old market, the river and the night-market grid are all walkable. So is the quieter half a street back from it, which is where most of the good small kitchens are.
Cambodia prices in US dollars and gives change in riel. Bring clean notes; damaged ones are refused, including by ATMs' own customers.
Leave at 04:30 for the 05:00 opening. Angkor Wat faces west, which is the reason the dawn works here and nowhere else in the park: the five towers go black against the colour and double in the northern reflecting pool. The southern pool has the same view and fewer elbows.
Give the outer gallery an hour. Six hundred metres of bas-relief, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, and a central group of towers standing for Mount Meru. Covered shoulders and knees are enforced at the upper-level stairs, not politely.
Angkor Thom in the late morning: Jayavarman VII's walled capital from around 1200, the Bayon's 200-plus faces, and galleries that show markets and cockfights and the Cham war instead of gods. Ta Prohm to finish, where the roots were left in place on purpose and an inscription records the 12,500 people the monastery supported.
Book a licensed guide for this day specifically. Nothing in the Bayon galleries is labelled and you will walk past the best of it otherwise.
Banteay Srei is 37 kilometres north-east and worth the drive on its own: pink sandstone carved deep enough to hold shadow, consecrated in 967, and small enough to see properly in an hour. It shuts earlier than the central temples. Beng Mealea, further east, is the counterweight — Angkor Wat's scale, uncleared, walked on boards over its own rubble.
If you would rather break the stone up, the Tonle Sap is the alternative. The lake reverses with the monsoon and the stilt villages read completely differently depending on the month, so ask what the water is doing before you book. Your three-day pass spans a ten-day window, so using a day on the lake costs nothing.
Last night in Siem Reap: Phare's circus, which came out of a school in Battambang that takes children from hard backgrounds, or a classical Apsara performance. If you are going to Battambang tomorrow, Phare has a neat symmetry to it.
Phnom Kulen gets sold alongside these and is not on the Angkor pass — it charges USD 20 of its own and the road up is steep. Only worth it when the falls are running.
Three hours or so south-west by road, or the long way by boat down the Sangker river when the water is high enough, which takes most of a day and is a trip in itself rather than a transfer.
Battambang itself is a grid of French colonial shophouses along a river, quiet in a way neither Siem Reap nor Phnom Penh is. The bamboo train is the obvious stop: the original line at O Dambong was replaced by a purpose-built tourist track at Banan, which is honest to say out loud — it is a ride, not a commute — but the mechanism is real and the single-track lifting ritual when two norries meet still happens.
Time the day so that you are at Phnom Sampeau before dusk. The bats come out of the cliff cave in a continuous ribbon for roughly half an hour, and there is no build-up: one minute nothing, then a stream that does not stop. The same hill holds a killing cave, a Khmer Rouge execution site with a memorial at the bottom, and seeing it the day before Tuol Sleng is the right order.
The bats are a fixed appointment with the sun, not with a schedule. Be in place twenty minutes before dusk; arriving late means arriving after.
Battambang to Phnom Penh is around five hours on National Road 5. Leave early and you still have the afternoon, which is what this day is for.
Tuol Sleng was a secondary school until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge made it Security Prison 21. The classrooms hold the iron bed frames and the intake photographs of almost everyone who passed through. Between twelve and twenty thousand people were held; around a dozen came out.
Choeung Ek, 15 kilometres from the city, is where most of them were taken. The memorial stupa holds some 5,000 skulls and the audio guide, partly narrated by a survivor, is what makes the visit bearable and worth doing. Together they are half a day. Afterwards, the riverfront at Sisowath Quay in the early evening is the right pace — the city walks there, and it is a reminder that Phnom Penh is a working capital and not a memorial.
Both sites ask you not to photograph inside the cell blocks or the stupa, and neither suits young children. Go in the afternoon rather than first thing, so the day has somewhere to go afterwards.
Start at the Royal Palace, which has housed the Cambodian king since 1866 and is still a residence, so you see the Throne Hall from outside and the apartments not at all. The Silver Pagoda in the same compound is named for the five thousand silver tiles of its floor, mostly covered now, and holds a Buddha of 90 kilograms of gold set with over two thousand diamonds. The dress code is enforced at the gate.
The National Museum is next door and closes for lunch, so it goes second and early. It has the best Khmer sculpture anywhere, and after four days of seeing these figures on temple walls it lands differently indoors.
Spend what is left on the city. The Central Market's art deco dome opened in 1937; Psar Toul Tom Poung, the Russian Market, is the one for silver, silk and knock-offs. A tuk-tuk street-art and food run covers the parts in between, and a sunset hour on the Mekong is the cheapest good thing in the city. Leave 40 to 50 minutes for the airport, which is now 20-odd kilometres south.
If you have a late flight, Koh Dach the silk island is a short ferry upstream and still has weavers working handlooms under their houses. It fills a spare half-day better than another market.
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.
Yes, and it is the day most people remember. It is the only stop on this route that is not organised around visitors: a quiet river town of French shophouses, the bamboo train, and the bat exodus at Phnom Sampeau at dusk. It also sits roughly on the line between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, so it costs you less road than it looks.
When the water is high, usually August to January. It runs down the Sangker river and through floating villages, takes six to nine hours, and is a day out rather than a transfer. In the dry months the boat either does not run or gets stuck, and the road is three hours. Check the month before you plan around it.
No, and anyone who says otherwise is selling. The original norry line at O Dambong was replaced by a purpose-built track at Banan. The carts and the lifting ritual when two meet are real; the route is for visitors. It is still a good twenty minutes and worth doing with that understood.
National Roads 5 and 6 are surfaced and fine, with the usual delays for roadworks, markets spilling into the carriageway and slow traffic. Siem Reap to Battambang is about 3 to 3.5 hours for 170 km and Battambang to Phnom Penh around 5 hours for 290 km. Those numbers already include the reality; do not plan on beating them.
Five covers Angkor and Phnom Penh. The sixth day exists to put something between them that is not a transfer, and Battambang is the best available. If your sixth day is going spare, the alternative is a fourth Siem Reap night for Koh Ker or Preah Vihear, both of which are most of a day of driving.
Phnom Penh, so the route runs one way and you never drive the same road twice. Open-jaw tickets into Siem Reap and out of Phnom Penh usually cost the same as a return into either, because regional carriers price the legs separately.
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