Angkor Temples, Villages & Beach Resorts

Welcome to Phnom Penh! Your 10-day Cambodia private tour will start upon your arrival at this capital city. Meet your guide and driver in the Arrival Hall at the airport, and you will be escorted to the hotel downtown by our private car.

► How to Apply for a Cambodia SIM Card
If you need a 10-day local SIM card plan to fit the trip, you can apply for one at the service desks of the four primary communication carriers - Cellcard, Metfone, Seatel, and Smart - at the airport exit. Smart is recommended for its better network speed and signal. Kindly remind that it costs more for a SIM card at the airport than downtown, so you can also find a Mobile Business Hall near your hotel.

► What to Do in Your Free Time: Phnom Penh City Walk
Our selected five-star hotel is very close to the Tonle Sap River, so you can walk east along the road in front of the hotel to the riverside and then along the river to the Royal Palace Park, where you can enjoy the intriguing night view of the lit-up Royal Palace. Our four-star hotel is next to the Wat Phnom Temple, which has a park for leisure; roaming in it like a resident will immerse you in authentic Cambodian life.

Accommodation: Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh (5 stars) or Sunway Hotel (4 stars)

In the morning, you will first visit the Royal Palace, a majestic palace complex situated on the bank of the Tonle Sap River and the Mekong River confluence, serving as the residence of the King of Cambodia and his family. Throne Hall and Silver Pagoda are highlighted amid the palaces that are magnificent or small but exquisite. Most buildings in the Royal Palace are designed in a typical Khmer style- tall minarets in the center of the roof and roof ridges with upturned pointy eaves at both ends, along with vivid murals in corridors as if outdo time, mesmerizing both tourists and local pilgrims.

Then follow your guide to the National Museum of Cambodia nearby, unmissable for Angkor statue lovers. The highlights are Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, mainly from the Angkor area from the 8th to 13th centuries, which also manifest specific characteristics of ancient India, ancient Greece and even ancient Egypt, indicating the cultural integration of the Khmer Empire (802-1431).Continue to Wat Phnom Temple built in the 14th century, the origin of Phnom Penh city’s name. You will be greeted by two statues of the seven-headed Naga serpent at the entrance and many Angkor sculptures on both sides of the stairs up the hill. Accompanied by the thick smell of burning incense, you can step inside the main hall with your shoes off, along with the endless stream of believers.

After all visits, we will drive 3.5 hours to Kep, a coastal city rich in seafood, especially crabs. The hotel we selected for you is a resort overlooking the sea on the mountainside and is equipped with Khmer-style wooden villas with outdoor swimming pools. Tucking into delicacies while enjoying the sea view will wipe out your fatigue during the day.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Veranda Natural Resort, Kep (4 stars)

Have breakfast in the hotel and then drive for about 30 minutes to Phnom Chhngok Cave Temple in Kampot. Crossing a small bridge and climbing some 200 stairs, we will reach the cave entrance on the mountain, which offers a splendid view of the Cambodian countryside. Pay attention to the slippery, narrow path in the cave when appreciating wondrous stalactites and Buddha statues.
* Note: The cave temple is unavailable on weekends, but we can get to Kep National Park as an alternative if you like.

Next, explore a pepper farm after a 40-minute drive. As the home to one of the world’s best peppers, Kampot is known internationally for its green, white, black and red peppers. You will be guided to observe the organic farm, watch pepper planting and taste over ten kinds of peppers. We will have lunch in the farm’s restaurant, trying specials cooked with Kampot pepper. You must wonder how pepper Americano and pepper ice cream taste.

After lunch, we will return to the hotel in Kep. You can rest for a while and spend your free time in Kep Crab Market. Walk there downhill by yourself in 10 minutes. The market in the afternoon may be less lively than in the morning, but wandering among various seafood stalls without crowds is also recreational. Walk south from the market for about 200m, and there is a Holy Crab Restaurant ideal for dinner, where you can enjoy stirred fried crabs with Kampot peppers while admiring the sunset by the seaside.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Veranda Natural Resort, Kep (4 stars)

We will drive for about 3.5 hours this morning to Phnom Penh. Upon arrival at the hotel and having a lunch break, follow your guide to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which silently tells the horrifying tragedy of Phnom Penh caused by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime (1975 - 1979). This memorial site nowadays was once S-21 Prison for detention and interrogation, and cruel torture tools, photos, and historical materials on display are reminiscent of appalling scenes at that time. Around 12,000 to 20,000 people were imprisoned and tortured here, and a black marble monument on the square records the names of 12,000 victims. We may encounter two of the twelve survivors sharing their suffering, and you can take photos with them.

Continue to the Choeung EK Killing Fields, where the prisoners in Tuol Sleng were executed. An appalling memorial stupa with a total of 17 floors, representing April 17, 1975 - the day the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh - tells of the horrors here. The bottom 10 floors contain over 9,000 skulls, and the top 7 store other bones and clothing. You can even imagine how macabre the victims were brutally executed through the machete gashes or hammer holes in their skulls. In the end, we will drive you back to the hotel.

► Recommendation for Your Free Time: Mekong River Cruise
You can have a city walk at night to ease the somber mood of this afternoon, or walk 15 minutes from your hotel to the River Boat Harbor to take a Mekong River cruise. The cruise takes about 1 hour and costs $5 per person, and you can get a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer for free with the ticket. It is advisable to get there around 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm when you can admire both sunset and night views accompanied by a band performance.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh (5 stars) or Sunway Hotel (4 stars)

Today, we are going to Battambang with stopovers at Oudong Mountain and Kampong Chhnang. After a 1-hour drive, we will first get to Oudong Mountain, once Cambodia’s capital for nearly 250 years until 1866, which has six stupas as kings’ columbaria, nicknamed the City of Past Kings. Climbing over 500 stairs to the mountaintop is physically challenging, but the grand stupa built in 1999 and the stunning countryside view will reward you.

Drive for another 1 hour to Kampong Chhnang, meaning the “Port of Pottery” in Khmer. Kampong abounds in quality clay, making it Cambodia’s pottery town, just like Edgefield in the United States. We will visit a village, seeing how pottery and rice wine are made here. After the lunch break, we will drive about 2.5 to 3 hours to Battambang and check into the hotel.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Maisons Wat Kor (4 stars) or Bambu Battambang Hotel (3 stars)

The first attraction in Battambang is Wat Banan Temple, sitting on a hill overlooking the Sangkae River. Its distinctive five towers are analogues of the better-known Angkor Wat. This 10th-century to 13th-century temple was found wholly collapsed and was restored by piecing stones together. One of the temples is used for residents to worship, with Hindu religious music hovering over it. Many cacti are engraved with people’s yearning for better lives, called “wishing cacti.”

Then, we will experience the famous bamboo train, commonly used as transportation in the past, consisting of barbell-like iron wheels, a bamboo board, and an engine, and it has now become a must-try for tourists. On the nearly one-hour bamboo train round trip, you will see the beautiful countryside scenery of forests, rice fields, ponds, and orchards.

Today’s last destination is Phnom Sampeau Mountain. Along over 700 stairs ascending to the top, we will surprised by an ancient temple, Wat Phnom Sampeau, and the panoramic view of Battambang. Go down about 100 stairs to the Killing Caves, another execution place of the Khmer Rouge, and you can see a glass monument displaying skulls of victims like what we visited in the killing fields in Phnom Penh. Finally, we will be down at the foot of the mountain before 6:00 pm to watch thousands of bats flying out of caves for food-hunting.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Maisons Wat Kor (4 stars) or Bambu Battambang Hotel (3 stars)

Today, we will make it to Siem Reap by driving for 3 hours. After check-in and having lunch, you will be guided to take a boat ride around a floating village on Tonle Sap Lake, where the housing, churches, schools, and hospitals are all stilted style, floating on the lake with the higher water level in the rainy season. Residents mainly live on fishing and tourism; children spend half a day at school and the other half on making a living. On the return journey, we will visit a Khmer Village, where you can see local modified pull-type motorcycles, stilted buildings, and stretching rice fields.

Back downtown and follow your guide to explore the Old Market, whose exquisite handicrafts and various Cambodian snacks have found favor with tourists. After that, we can drive you to the hotel, or you can continue to spend your free time on the neighboring Pub Street, filled with bars and spas for relaxing. Temple Club, the liveliest bar in Siem Reap with the largest dancing floor on the street, and Red Piano, a dining bar gaining momentum thanks to the film star Angelina Jolie, are both recommended.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Anantara Angkor Resort (5 stars) or Tara Angkor Hotel (4 stars)

★ Showstopper of Cambodia Tour: Sunrise at Angkor Wat
The temple hill in the center of Angkor Wat comprises a three-layer rectangular platform, stacked high like a pyramid, symbolizing Mount Meru - the sacred mountain in Indian mythology. Its five pagodas stand for the five peaks of Mount Meru, the three corridors for the soil, water, and wind, and a moat for the Aral Sea surrounding Mount Meru. This morning, we will watch the sun rising behind such magnificent architecture; no wonder the Angkor Wat sunrise is admired by tourists worldwide.

You can take pictures of the silhouette of Angkor Wat at the Buddhist texts libraries on both sides before sunrise, on the right side of the corridor leading to Angkor Wat at sunrise, and on the lawn in front of Angkor Wat after sunrise. We can bring food from the hotel, have a breakfast picnic in Angkor Wat, and then visit Angkor Wat in the cool morning. Another considerate service is that your guide will flexibly choose a day to watch sunrise according to the weather as long as you are in Siem Reap.Continue to explore the Angkor Thom, the last capital of the Khmer Empire, rebuilt in the 9th century by King Jayavarman VII. Covering about 10 km2 (4 mi2), it is home to many famous Angkorian temples, among which the Bayon Temple in the center is an unmissable masterpiece, featuring over 200 four-faced smiling Buddha statues, called the “Khmer Smile”. Then, walk to the Baphuon Temple, the world’s largest and most complex three-dimensional building. Although badly damaged, the ruins remain impressive and shocking today. And at the Terrace of Elephants, a few hundred meters from Baphuon, you will see a 350-meter-long (1150-feet) and 2.5-meter-high (8-feet) platform carved with elephants, lions, rhinoceros, and other pachyderms.

The last crowning touch of today is to view the sunset at Pre Rup, a tiny temple that used to be a royal crematorium. Be careful when climbing on hands and feet to the top following the slightly steep stairs, and you won’t be disappointed by the spellbinding scenery of Angkor Thom. Touch the golden red bricks in the setting sun, and you will be immersed in the tranquil Pre Rup. Finally, we will transfer you to our handpicked restaurant tonight, where you will enjoy a buffet dinner with an eye-catching Apsara Dance Show.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner with Apsara Dance Show
Accommodation: Anantara Angkor Resort (5 stars) or Tara Angkor Hotel (4 stars)

Today, we will drive 1 hour to Banteay Srei, a delicate temple built of red sandstone, highly praised as one of the finest works of ancient Khmer architecture for its exquisite reliefs, especially the statues of deities and filamentous reliefs on the three pagodas in the center. Then, drive back to visit Preah Kahn, the only temple that manifests ancient Roman and Greek architectural styles in the Angkor complex, the most typical of which is a circular pillar-structure building. Nearby is the Neak Pean, which used to be a sanatorium consisting of five square ponds for herbal baths. Walking on the wooden floating bridge leading to the central island, you can see lotus spreading over the ponds.

In the afternoon, continue to Ta Som, where you will gasp at a banyan root growing up the temple and finally penetrating the porch, as its other name - strangler fig - shows. Ta Prohm, another temple intertwined with kapok trees - nicknamed “snake trees” by locals, embraces a magnificent scene of tree branches and roots clustering with ancient pagodas, and that’s why it was unrestored and drew the director to shoot the famous movie Tomb Raider here.

At last, we will come to Banteay Kdei, said to be a resting place for the royal family after bathing. Despite the small scale and severe deterioration, artistic carvings on the crumbling pillars are still attractive. You will feel a strong vitality lingering in exuberant vegetation and gravitate toward an iconic giant kapok tree, the favorite of tourists’ photos of Banteay Kdei. Since it’s an off-the-beaten-track site for tour groups and the last stop of our Angkor ruins tour, you can enjoy the tranquil temple fully and shoot unique photographs. Farewell to Angkor heritage, and we will transfer you back to the hotel.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
Accommodation: Anantara Angkor Resort (5 stars) or Tara Angkor Hotel (4 stars)

After a 2-day visit to Angkor ruins, the Angkor National Museum will sublimate your admiration of Khmer culture. As a supplement to distant views of many temples in the scenic spot, a closer and more precise observation of sculptures and complete appearances of some broken statues in Angkor Wat will further enrich your experience. You can take pictures on your phone but not with your camera.

Finally, your guide and driver will escort you to the airport. Hope you are satisfied with our itinerary and have a good journey!

Meal: Breakfast