Seven days is the classic overland route with breathing room — four nights Siem Reap, one Battambang, three Phnom Penh. The extra Siem Reap day reaches Koh Ker and Preah Vihear, the two best temples with no queue, and the third Phnom Penh night buys Koh Dach silk island or Oudong.
| Day | Based in | What you do | Getting there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Siem Reap | Arrive, pass, and the town | SAI airport to Siem Reap town: about 45 km, 45–60 minutes, up to 75 in the rains or at the evening peak on National Road 6 |
| 2 | Siem Reap | Sunrise, Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm | 20 minutes to the park |
| 3 | Siem Reap | Banteay Srei, Beng Mealea, or the lake | Banteay Srei 37 km, about 50 minutes |
| 4 | Siem Reap | Koh Ker, Preah Vihear, or an empty day in the park | Koh Ker: about 120 km, 2 hours each way |
| 5 | Battambang | The bamboo train and the bats at Phnom Sampeau | Siem Reap to Battambang: about 170 km, 3–3 |
| 6 | Phnom Penh | Down National Road 5, then S-21 and Choeung Ek | Battambang to Phnom Penh: about 290 km on National Road 5, roughly 5 hours |
| 7 | Phnom Penh | Palace, museum, and the river islands | City centre to Techo International Airport: 20–24 km south, 40–50 minutes, more in the evening peak |
Seven days is the length at which Cambodia stops feeling rushed. It is the standard overland route — Siem Reap, Battambang, Phnom Penh — with one spare day at each end of the middle, and those spare days are what separate it from the five-day version.
In Siem Reap the extra time buys the outlying temples, which is where the park gets interesting once you have seen the famous three. Koh Ker, two hours north-east, was briefly the capital in the 10th century and has Prasat Thom, a seven-tiered sandstone pyramid 36 metres high with a wooden stair to the top. Preah Vihear sits on a cliff on the Thai border. Neither has a queue.
In Phnom Penh the third night means the city gets a day that is not about the Khmer Rouge. Koh Dach, the silk island, is a short ferry upstream and still has weavers at handlooms under their houses; Oudong was the royal capital for more than 250 years until 1866 and its hilltop stupas hold the ashes of kings. Two nights in Phnom Penh is the memorial; three is the city.
The complete first trip. Enough time for Angkor without cramming, one place off the circuit, and a capital seen as somewhere people live rather than only as a memorial.
Forty-five kilometres and 45 to 60 minutes in from the airport, so treat arrival day as arrival day. Buy the three-day Angkor pass at the Angkor Enterprise office before it shuts at 17:30 — there is no ticket sale at the temples themselves and the 04:30 queue tomorrow is long.
The town is small and the useful part of it is walkable: old market, river, and the quieter streets a block back from the night-market grid where the good kitchens are. A first-night food walk is the highest-return thing you can do with a spare evening here, because the barrier to eating well in Cambodia is knowing what to ask for, not finding it.
Start with fish amok, a coconut curry steamed in a banana-leaf cup until it sets, and lok lak, pepper-seared beef with a lime and Kampot pepper sauce. Both are built on kroeung, the lemongrass, galangal, turmeric and kaffir-lime paste that gets pounded fresh every morning in every kitchen in the country.
Buy the Angkor pass tonight. It is the one errand that makes tomorrow's 04:30 start survivable.
Out by 04:30 for the 05:00 opening. Angkor Wat is the one major Khmer temple that faces west, which is exactly why the sunrise works: the towers come up black and double in the northern reflecting pool. The southern pool gives the same photograph with fewer people in front of you.
The outer gallery is where to spend the morning — about 600 metres of continuous bas-relief, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk on the east side, and a central tower group that is a model of Mount Meru. Covered shoulders and knees are checked at the upper-level stairs.
Angkor Thom in the late morning: Jayavarman VII's capital from around 1200, eight metres of wall, five gates with causeways of gods and demons hauling a serpent, and the Bayon in the middle under 200-odd colossal faces. Its outer galleries show markets, a cockfight, a woman giving birth and the naval war against the Chams. Ta Prohm last, roots left in place on purpose, an inscription counting 12,500 people attached to the monastery and 80,000 more in the villages that fed it.
A licensed guide is worth it on this day and this day only. The Bayon galleries are unlabelled, and without someone pointing you walk past the best carving in the park.
North-east first, because Banteay Srei closes earlier than the central temples. Thirty-seven kilometres out, small, consecrated in 967, and carved in a pink sandstone deep enough to throw real shadow — it is the finest stonework in the country and takes about an hour to see properly.
Beng Mealea is the other half of the day, 60 kilometres east: a 12th-century temple on Angkor Wat's scale that was left uncleared, walked on boards over collapsed galleries with trees standing in the courtyards. Between the two you see both what Khmer masons could do and what the forest does when nobody stops it.
If you would rather break up the stone, the Tonle Sap is the swap. The lake reverses with the monsoon, so what a floating village looks like depends entirely on the month — stilt houses standing in water in October, on six-to-ten-metre legs above dry ground by March. Your three-day pass spans a ten-day window, so spending today on water costs you nothing.
Ask what the lake is doing this month before booking a village. A trip photographed in October will not resemble a February booking.
This is the day seven buys you, and the outlying temples are what it is for. Koh Ker is two hours north-east and was the capital for about two decades in the 10th century before the court moved back to Angkor. Prasat Thom there is a seven-tiered sandstone pyramid 36 metres high, climbed by a wooden stair, and from the top the forest runs to the horizon with nothing in it.
Preah Vihear is the other direction and the bigger day: a temple strung along a cliff on the Thai border, contested for decades and reached by a steep final climb, usually done in a 4x4 from the base. Banteay Chhmar, north-west towards the border, is the third option and the least visited of the three.
If you would rather not spend four hours in a car, the honest alternative is the grand circuit inside the park — Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup — which almost nobody does properly because everyone is on the small circuit. Preah Khan alone is the size of Ta Prohm with a tenth of the people. Finish with sunset from Pre Rup, which is the better of the two sunset temples and far less of a scrum than Phnom Bakheng.
Koh Ker and Preah Vihear both charge their own entry on top of the Angkor pass. Confirm what is included before you go rather than at the gate.
About three hours south-west, or the long way by boat down the Sangker river when the water is high, which takes six to nine hours and is a day out rather than a transfer.
Battambang is Cambodia's second city and by some distance its calmest: French shophouses along a river, a working market, and almost nobody from the temple circuit. The bamboo train is the famous stop — a bamboo platform on wheels with a small motor, run down a single track, lifted off by hand when two meet. Say plainly that the original line at O Dambong was replaced by a purpose-built track at Banan; the mechanism is real and the route is for visitors.
Be at Phnom Sampeau before dusk. Millions of wrinkle-lipped bats come out of the cliff cave in an unbroken ribbon for about half an hour, and there is no warm-up: nothing, then a stream that does not stop. The same hill holds a killing cave from the Khmer Rouge years, with a memorial at the bottom of the shaft. Seeing it the day before Tuol Sleng is the right order.
Phare's circus trains in Battambang, and the school is visitable. If you missed the show in Siem Reap, this is where it comes from.
Around five hours to the capital on National Road 5. Leave early and the afternoon is intact, which is what you want, because this afternoon is the reason to come to Phnom Penh at all.
Tuol Sleng was a secondary school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into Security Prison 21 in 1975. The classrooms still hold the iron bed frames and the intake photographs the regime took of every prisoner. Of the twelve to twenty thousand people held there, about a dozen survived.
Choeung Ek is 15 kilometres out, where most were taken to be killed, and its memorial stupa holds some 5,000 skulls. The audio guide, narrated in part by a survivor, is what makes it possible to walk the site rather than just look at it. The pair take about half a day. Afterwards the riverfront at Sisowath Quay in the early evening is the right pace and nothing more demanding than that.
Do these in the afternoon, not first thing. Most people need the rest of the day to be quiet afterwards, and an empty evening is easier to arrange than an empty morning.
The Royal Palace first, before the heat and before the museum closes for lunch. It has housed the Cambodian king since 1866 and is still a residence, so the apartments are shut and the Throne Hall is seen from outside. The Silver Pagoda in the same compound is named for five thousand silver floor tiles, mostly covered now to protect them, and holds a Buddha of 90 kilograms of gold set with more than two thousand diamonds. Shoulders and knees covered at the gate, enforced.
The National Museum next door holds the best Khmer sculpture anywhere and lands completely differently after a week of seeing the same figures on temple walls.
For the afternoon, get out on the water. Phnom Penh sits where the Mekong, the Tonle Sap and the Bassac meet, and Koh Dach, the silk island, is a short ferry upstream where weavers still work handlooms under their houses and sell direct. Oudong, 40 kilometres north-west, is the alternative: the royal capital for more than 250 years until 1866, with hilltop stupas holding the ashes of kings. Either beats a second market.
Koh Dach silk is sold at the loom for a fraction of the Russian Market price, and you can watch the piece being made. It is the one souvenir in Cambodia worth planning around.
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.
Siem Reap, if you like ruins — Koh Ker and Preah Vihear are the two best temples nobody queues for, and the grand circuit inside the park is emptier than the small one all day. Phnom Penh, if a week of temples is enough and you would rather see a working city. This route gives Siem Reap the fourth day and Phnom Penh the third night, which is the balance most people end up wanting.
For the last stretch, yes. The temple sits on a cliff on the Thai border and the final climb is done in a local 4x4 or on the back of a moto from the base station; your car from Siem Reap does not go up. It is a 12-hour day for 210 km each way, so it is a commitment rather than an add-on.
Yes, and it works if your flights force it, but Siem Reap first is better. You have the most energy for Angkor on the days you have just arrived, and it is easier to visit the Khmer Rouge sites after you have seen what Cambodia built than the other way round.
No. Seven is the point where the country stops being a temple stopover. If anything it is the first honest length — three days is Angkor, five is two cities, and seven is a route. Ten adds the south coast, which is a different trip rather than more of this one.
The Angkor pass is USD 62 and the outlying temples add their own entries. Private cars with driver run roughly USD 35–55 a day, more for Preah Vihear. Mid-range rooms are USD 30–60 and food is cheap unless you work at it. A comfortable week lands around USD 700–1,100 per person before international flights.
In the November to February peak, a day or two ahead for the Siem Reap to Battambang and Battambang to Phnom Penh legs, especially for the better operators. Outside peak you can usually book the morning of. The river boat to Battambang is the exception — it has limited seats and only runs when the water is high.
Every tour above runs with a verified local operator.
Browse all Cambodia tours