2 Days in Phnom Penh: The Khmer Rouge Sites, the Palace and the River

Two nights is the minimum that makes Phnom Penh worth the journey, and it is also enough. One day gets you the Khmer Rouge sites or the palace, not both, and a single day that tries for both does justice to neither.

The order matters more than the content. Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek go on the afternoon of the first day, and nothing else goes after them. The palace, the museum and the river go on the second morning. Done that way the trip has a shape: the hardest thing first, and then a day that shows you the city those events happened to, still functioning, loud and ordinary.

The reverse order - palace first, killing fields last - is what a lot of tours sell because it fits their transfers, and it leaves you finishing the city at Choeung Ek and getting on a plane. It is a worse trip.

One piece of logistics that catches people out: Phnom Penh switched to Techo International Airport on 9 September 2025, about 20 to 24 kilometres south of the centre, so allow 40 to 50 minutes each way and more in the evening peak. The old airport was half that.

Morning - however you arrive. From Siem Reap it is 315 kilometres and five and a half to six hours on National Road 6, or 55 minutes flying which is about four and a half hours door to door now both airports sit outside their cities. Either way you land with an afternoon.

Afternoon: Tuol Sleng, then Choeung Ek. S-21 was a secondary school until the Khmer Rouge converted it in 1975; the classrooms still hold the iron bed frames and the photographs the regime took of every prisoner on arrival. Of the twelve to twenty thousand people held there, around a dozen survived. Choeung Ek is fifteen kilometres out, and its memorial stupa holds some 5,000 skulls. Take the audio guide there - it is narrated in part by a survivor and it is what makes the site walkable.

Allow an hour and a half at each, so half a day for the pair. Our full guide to both sites covers hours, photography rules and what to read first.

Evening: Sisowath Quay. The riverfront promenade is where the city walks after work - families, food carts, aerobics classes in the park. It is the right weight for what is left of the day and it is free. Eat somewhere unremarkable and go to bed.

Early morning: the Royal Palace. Residence of the Cambodian king since 1866 and still lived in, so the apartments are closed and the Throne Hall is seen from outside. The Silver Pagoda in the same compound is floored with five thousand silver tiles, most now covered, and holds a Buddha of 90 kilograms of gold set with more than two thousand diamonds. Shoulders and knees covered, enforced at the gate. Details in our Royal Palace guide.

Late morning: the National Museum, a hundred metres away, holding the best Khmer sculpture collection in the world in a 1920 terracotta pavilion. It closes for lunch, so this has to be a morning stop.

Afternoon: the markets. The Central Market's art deco dome opened in 1937 and is cool underneath; the Russian Market, properly Psar Toul Tom Poung, is the one for silver, silk and knock-offs, hot and cramped by eleven so aim early or late. A tuk-tuk street-art and market run is the easiest way to see the streets between them, and the mural scene here has become genuinely good since about 2015.

Evening: the Mekong. Phnom Penh sits where the Mekong, the Tonle Sap and the Bassac meet, and an hour on the water at sunset costs very little. It is also the best way to understand the geography that put a capital here.

Koh Dach, the silk island - a short ferry upstream, and the best of the options. Weavers still work handlooms under their stilt houses and sell direct at the loom, for a fraction of the Russian Market price and with the piece being made in front of you. It is a half-day by tuk-tuk or a full day by bike, and the island itself is flat, green and almost traffic-free.

Oudong, 40 kilometres north-west, was the royal capital for more than 250 years until 1866, and its hilltop stupas hold the ashes of kings. A full day with the drive, and quiet.

Kampot and Kep as a day trip - three to four hours each way, which is a lot for one day, but the pepper smallholdings and the Kep crab market are the best eating in the country. If you can stay a night instead, do; if your dates are fixed, the day trip is still worth it.

Phnom Tamao, the wildlife rescue centre south of the city, takes in animals confiscated from the trade and is a genuine rescue operation rather than a zoo with a good story. Worth checking the current arrangements before booking.

If the third day is really about getting somewhere else, the transfer to Battambang with cultural stops on National Road 5 turns five hours of road into a day, and lines you up for the bamboo train and the bat cave. Our Cambodia itineraries set out where each of these fits.