What the place is
A town that exists to reach Angkor, the capital of an empire that ran most of mainland Southeast Asia for six centuries. The temple complex covers about four hundred square kilometres; the famous part is a fraction of it.
How many days at the temples
Three, on a three-day pass. Two works. One gets you Angkor Wat, the Bayon and Ta Prohm in a queue, and nothing of the quieter eastern sites where you can be alone in an eleventh-century courtyard.
How the passes work
Bought in person at the ticket office, with your photograph taken there. Passes are dated and non-transferable. Allow an extra half-hour on the first morning for it.
The sunrise question
Angkor Wat at sunrise means leaving before five, and sharing the reflecting pool with several hundred people. It is still worth doing once. Doing it three mornings running is a choice, not a requirement.
What sits near it
- The airport sits well outside town — budget an hour for the transfer, not twenty minutes.
- Tonle Sap and its stilt villages are a morning, and the water level changes the visit completely by season.
- Battambang is three hours south and is the obvious second Cambodian base.
Every route we run is private, so any of these can be added or dropped before we book anything.