One Day at Angkor: The Order That Beats the Crowds

Everybody visits the same three temples in one day. The difference between a good day and a miserable one is the order, and the order is decided by where the coaches are.

04:30 leave town. Angkor Wat opens at 05:00 and the sky colours before the sun clears the towers. Have your pass already, bought the evening before at the Angkor Enterprise office which closes at 17:30 and is the only seller.

06:30 the crowd leaves for breakfast, together. This is the single most useful fact on this page. The sunrise crowd walks back to the stalls at the same time and Angkor Wat empties. Go in while they go out. You get the 600 metres of bas-relief in the outer gallery and the upper level with almost nobody on the stairs.

08:30 Angkor Thom. The coaches are still at Angkor Wat. Enter by the south gate, whose causeway is lined with gods and demons hauling a serpent, and give the Bayon a full hour.

11:00 stop. From March to May the heat is in the mid-thirties and there is no shade in these courtyards. Eat, sit, drink more water than you want.

15:00 Ta Prohm. The roots temple is at its worst between nine and eleven, when the queue for the famous tree is a shuffle. By mid-afternoon it thins out and the light through the canopy is better anyway.

17:00 Pre Rup for sunset, not Phnom Bakheng - warm laterite, a view over forest, and no queue.

Angkor Wat, first half of the 12th century, built by Suryavarman II for Vishnu and later used as a Buddhist temple. Around 162 hectares inside the moat, the largest religious monument on earth. It faces west, alone among the great Khmer temples, which is the whole reason sunrise works here. Find the Churning of the Ocean of Milk on the east gallery - gods and demons pulling a serpent to churn the sea and produce the elixir of immortality, the same scene the Angkor Thom causeway sculpts in three dimensions.

The Bayon, around 1200, Jayavarman VII. Over 200 enormous faces on the towers, and nobody agrees whether they are the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the king, or deliberately both. Look down as well as up: the outer galleries carve markets, a cockfight, a woman giving birth and the naval war against the Chams. That is ordinary Khmer life, and it is the part most visitors walk past.

Ta Prohm, 1186, built by the same king as a Buddhist monastery and university. The French conservators left the silk-cotton and strangler fig in place on purpose. Its own inscription records that it supported more than 12,500 people, with another 80,000 in the villages that fed it.

A single day gets you the three famous temples at a brisk pace. Here is what it does not get you, so you can decide before you buy a one-day pass at USD 37.

No Banteay Srei. The finest carving in the country is 37 kilometres north-east and closes earlier than the central temples. It needs its own morning.

No Beng Mealea or Koh Ker. Both are an hour or more out and are where Angkor stops feeling like a queue.

No grand circuit. Preah Khan is the size of Ta Prohm with a tenth of the people, and one day never reaches it.

The arithmetic argues against one day anyway. A one-day pass is USD 37 and a three-day is USD 62, valid on any three days inside a ten-day window. Two single days cost USD 74, more than the three-day. If there is any chance you will want a second temple day, you have already bought the wrong ticket.

If your dates genuinely allow one day, take it and do the order above. If they allow two, the three-day itinerary shows what the extra time buys.

Transport. A tuk-tuk for the small circuit runs roughly USD 18-25 and is hired by the day, because your driver waits at each temple rather than dropping you. A private car is USD 35-55 and earns it from March to May. Cycling the 17 kilometres is a genuine pleasure from November to February and a bad idea in April.

A guide. USD 35-45 on top. Worth it for this day specifically: nothing at the Bayon is labelled and the bas-relief galleries are unreadable without someone to point. Licensed Cambodian guides carry a numbered Ministry of Tourism badge.

Dress code. Shoulders and knees covered, enforced at the upper level of Angkor Wat. Light long trousers beat shorts in that heat anyway.

Water. More than you think. There are drink sellers at every temple and they are not a rip-off.

Shoes. Uneven sandstone, steep stairs, and rubble at Ta Prohm. Trainers, not sandals.

Torch for the pre-dawn causeway, which is unlit before 05:30.

Do not buy your pass from anyone but Angkor Enterprise. The price is fixed, there is one ticket office, and tickets are not sold at the temple gates - a driver who says he will handle it there is wrong and you will be turned back.