CAMBODIA · SOUTHEAST ASIA
Sunrise over Angkor, and the kingdom beyond.
The temples of Angkor at first light, the stilt villages of the Tonle Sap, the bamboo train at Battambang and the slow Mekong through Phnom Penh. The whole Khmer kingdom, gate to gate.
Only here
Only in the Khmer kingdom.
Temple tours and river cruises run right across Southeast Asia. Sunrise behind the five towers of Angkor, the stilt villages out on the great lake, and Battambang's one-rail bamboo train belong to Cambodia alone.
Dawn at Angkor
Sunrise Behind the Towers
Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument ever built, raised in the early twelfth century for the Khmer god-king Suryavarman II. Before first light the crowds gather at the northern reflecting pool and wait. As the sky behind the five lotus towers turns from grey to rose to gold, the whole temple doubles in the still water. It is the picture the country is known by, and it earns it.
- 1 Siem Reap: Angkor Wat: Small-Group Sunrise or Sunset Tour
- 2 Siem Reap: Angkor Wat 2-Day Tour with Sunrise and Sunset
- 3 Siem Reap: Full-Day Angkor Wat Guided Tour with Sunset
The great lake
Villages on the Water
The Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, and the strangest: each monsoon its river reverses and the lake swells five times over. Whole communities live with the flood. At Kampong Phluk the houses stand on stilts six metres tall, and at Chong Khneas they simply float, with shops, schools and gardens drifting between them. You move through it all by narrow boat.
- 1 From Siem Reap: Kampong Phluk Floating Village Tour by Boat
- 2 Siem Reap: Kulen Mountain, Beng Mealea and Tonle Sap Tour
- 3 Siem Reap: Kompong Phluk Floating Village Half-Day Tour
Battambang
The Bamboo Train
The norry is pure Cambodian improvisation: a bamboo platform laid over two tank-wheel axles and pushed along by a small petrol motor, rattling down the warped single track of an old French rail line. There is only one rail, so when two trains meet, the lighter one is lifted clear in under a minute and dropped back on once the other has passed. Nowhere else runs a railway quite like it.
- 1 Battambang: Tuk-Tuk, Bamboo Train, Killing/Bat Caves, Sunset
- 2 Battambang Tuk Tuk tour: Bambootrain, Killing & Bat Caves,Sunset
- 3 Afternoon tour by tuk tuk to bamboo train,bat cave,killing cave,countryside.
Where to start
Begin where Cambodia begins, at Angkor.
More travellers build a Cambodia trip around this one morning than anything else in the kingdom.
The classics
Cambodia's Most Popular Tours
Angkor at sunrise, the floating villages of the Tonle Sap, the Killing Fields and the temples beyond the moat. The days most travellers come for.
Where to begin
The days a Cambodia trip is built around.
The sunrise at Angkor, the temple loops, the floating villages, the day Phnom Penh asks of you, the tuk-tuk runs and the climb up Phnom Kulen. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
How to see Angkor.
The temples spread across 400 square kilometres of forest, so the how matters as much as the if. Three ways to take on the Angkor park, depending on the days you have and the pace you want.
Phnom Penh
The capital on the Mekong.
Where the Mekong meets the Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s capital keeps the golden spires of the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, a breezy riverfront and the tangle of Central Market all within a short tuk-tuk ride. It also holds the day the country asks you not to skip: Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge years are met head-on.
Read the guide: the best of Phnom Penh →The river
Sunset on the Mekong.
The Mekong has carried Cambodia for as long as there has been a Cambodia. At dusk in Phnom Penh the dinner boats push out as the light turns the water gold and the Royal Palace lights come on along the bank. Upriver at Kratie the rare Irrawaddy dolphins surface in the calm. The slow, generous way to close a day.
See the river cruises →The temple city
A thousand temples in the forest.
For six hundred years Angkor was the capital of the Khmer Empire, and for a time the largest city on earth. More than a thousand temples still stand across the forest, from Angkor Wat and the stone faces of the Bayon down to brick towers the jungle is yet to give back. You could spend a week and only scratch it.
Explore the temples →Phnom Kulen
Where the empire began.
In 802 a king named Jayavarman II climbed this mountain and had himself declared god-king, and the Khmer Empire began. A carved riverbed of a thousand lingas still runs under the shallows, a giant reclining Buddha is cut into the summit boulder, and the day ends in the pool below the waterfall.
- 1 Kulen Mountain: Small-Group Tour and Picnic lunch
- 2 Siem Reap: Kulen Mountain, Beng Mealea and Tonle Sap Tour
- 3 Phnom Kulen Waterfall & the Sacred 1000 Lingas (with Lunch)
Out past the temples
Rice fields, ox carts and village crafts.
Step away from the temples and Cambodia is overwhelmingly rural and quietly welcoming. Bicycle and tuk-tuk runs thread the rice country around Siem Reap to stilt-house villages, palm-sugar makers, silk weavers and lotus farms, often ending with a home-cooked Khmer lunch under the house. The slow half-day that travellers say they remember most.
See all 21 countryside tours →By place
The kingdom, six ways.
Siem Reap for the temples. Phnom Penh for the capital and its history. Battambang for the bamboo train. The Tonle Sap for the floating villages. Phnom Kulen for the sacred mountain. Kampot for the pepper and the slow river.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Sunrise if you want the photograph. A tuk-tuk if you want the temples slow. A boat if you want the floating villages. Cycling, food, classical dance and the river by night.
The grand tour
The classic route through the kingdom.
First time in Cambodia? This is the overland circuit most travellers follow, north to south, with the days that earn their place at each stop.
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