Cambodia 5 Day Itinerary

Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument ever built, covering over 400 acres, and most visitors spend exactly two days trying to see all of it rather than taking the time to understand why the Khmer built it the way they did. This itinerary is structured to get you into the temples before the tour buses arrive and out before the heat becomes oppressive, leaving time for the parts of Cambodia that most people skip entirely.

Visas and Entry

The Cambodia tourist e-Visa costs USD 30 and covers 30 days. Apply at the official government site before you travel; approval takes three business days and saves you the queue at the visa-on-arrival counter. Visa on arrival also costs USD 30 but requires two passport photos (4cm x 6cm) and cash in US dollars. Both options give you the same 30-day stay. All air arrivals must also complete a Cambodia e-Arrival Card online within seven days before landing. It is free and takes five minutes. Do it before you leave home.

Getting In

Siem Reap International Airport (SAI) opened in 2023 to replace the old REP airport. It sits about 50 km from the city centre, so airport transfer costs more now and takes longer: a fixed-rate taxi runs around USD 25 to 30 and the drive is 45 to 60 minutes depending on traffic. Arrange this through your hotel or a pre-booked service rather than accepting unsolicited offers in the arrivals hall. The PassApp ride-hailing application works in Siem Reap and is more transparent on pricing than negotiating with drivers directly.

Where to Stay

The Old Market area (Psah Chas) is the traditional base, walkable to Pub Street, the river, and tuk-tuk access to the temples. Mid-range guesthouses here run USD 20 to 40 per night. For quieter surroundings with good restaurants, the area north of the Royal Gardens around Sivatha Boulevard has more options at similar prices.

Angkor Passes

Buy your Angkor pass the afternoon before you plan to use it. The ticket booth on Road 60, about 4 km north of the city centre, now has self-service kiosks that accept credit cards and process transactions in under two minutes. Prices as of 2026: one-day pass USD 37, three-day pass USD 62 (valid any three days within ten days), seven-day pass USD 72 (valid any seven days within a month). Children under 12 enter free. The three-day pass is the right choice for this itinerary.

Day 1: Arrival and Angkor Thom

Arrive and check in. In the afternoon, go to Angkor Thom rather than Angkor Wat itself. Angkor Thom is the walled city that surrounds Bayon Temple, and beginning here rather than at Angkor Wat gives you a better sense of scale. Bayon’s 54 towers carry 216 smiling stone faces; the upper terrace puts you at face level with them. The Terrace of the Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King are both within the walled city and take another hour to walk properly.

Dinner on arrival night: Sugar Palm on Pokambor Avenue near the riverside is run by a chef who returned from working abroad specifically to revive pre-war Khmer recipes. The beef lok lak and fish amok are the standards to judge by. Main dishes run USD 5 to 10. It fills up, so arrive by 6:30 pm.

Skip Pub Street for now. It will still be there on your last night if you want it.

Day 2: Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

This is the sunrise day. Set an alarm for 4:30 am. The walk from the west entrance causeway to the reflecting pool takes about ten minutes in the dark, and the pre-dawn crowd at the pool is dense but manageable. After sunrise, most tour groups move inside the main temple complex, so the causeway itself clears. Take your time with the bas-reliefs on the first gallery level; they run 800 metres around the perimeter and contain more narrative detail than any guide will summarise in a five-minute stop.

By 8 am, the heat is building. Move to Ta Prohm. The strangler fig and kapok trees growing through the sandstone galleries are famous from film coverage, and yes, it is atmospheric. It also has the most intense tourist crowding of any temple after Angkor Wat itself. Go directly to the far eastern entrance and work backwards toward the west: most visitors enter from the west and you will be moving against the flow.

Lunch near the temples at a stall or small restaurant in the village area on the road back runs USD 2 to 4 for rice dishes and noodle soups. The restaurants directly adjacent to the temple parking areas charge three times as much for inferior food.

Afternoon rest. The combination of heat and early start makes this sensible, not lazy.

Day 3: Banteay Srei and Kampong Phluk

Banteay Srei is 37 km northeast of Siem Reap and worth every minute of the journey. The temple is built from pink sandstone rather than the grey-green laterite of most Angkor structures, and the carving detail is exceptional, far finer than anything in the main complex. It is also smaller and less crowded. Arrive by 8 am. Hire a tuk-tuk for the day for this trip; expect to pay USD 25 to 35 including waiting time.

On the way back, Beng Mealea is a partially unexcavated temple about 60 km from Siem Reap that most visitors bypass in favour of the main complex. It is overgrown, partially collapsed, and accessible only on wooden walkways. Entry is USD 5 for foreigners. It is a genuinely different experience from the tended temples of the main circuit and merits an hour.

In the late afternoon, Kampong Phluk is a village of stilted houses on Tonle Sap Lake, about 16 km south of Siem Reap. During the wet season (June to November) the lake floods and the houses appear to float; during the dry season the stilts are fully exposed and some reach nine metres high. Take a boat through the flooded forest if the season allows. The visit runs about two hours and costs around USD 15 to 20 including boat hire. This is the experience that most five-day Angkor trips omit and should not.

Dinner: Cuisine Wat Damnak, on the east bank of the Siem Reap River near Wat Damnak temple, serves a set tasting menu of six courses using Cambodian ingredients and is consistently named among the best restaurants in Southeast Asia. It opens Tuesday to Saturday for dinner only and takes reservations, which are necessary. Budget around USD 35 to 45 per person. It is expensive by Cambodian standards and worth every dollar if you eat there once.

Day 4: Battambang

The journey from Siem Reap to Battambang is three hours by road or five to seven hours by boat on the Tonle Sap River (wet season only). The boat is scenic but slow; the road is faster and lets you arrive in time to make proper use of the day.

Battambang is a riverfront provincial town with intact French colonial architecture, fewer tourists than Siem Reap, and a food scene that punches well above its size. Lunch at Jaan Bai, a social enterprise restaurant training disadvantaged youth, costs about USD 6 to 10 for excellent Khmer food and excellent coffee.

The Bamboo Train (Norry) is 7 km outside town: a bamboo platform on repurposed railway axles, powered by a small engine, running on the surviving section of Cambodia’s old rail line. It is inherently absurd and excellent. When two trains meet, one disassembles to let the other pass. Entry around USD 5. Arrive in the late afternoon when the light is better and the heat has dropped.

Phare Ponleu Selpak is a non-profit arts school where students put on circus and theatre performances several evenings a week. Tickets run around USD 18. The quality is high and the proceeds go directly to the school’s training programme.

The bat caves at Phnom Sampeau are 12 km southwest of Battambang. At dusk, millions of bats emerge from the cave mouth in a column that takes 20 to 30 minutes to disperse. It is a spectacle with no useful way to photograph it, which may be why it stays on fewer itineraries than it deserves.

Return to Siem Reap by shared minivan (USD 7 to 10, about three hours) for your final night.

Day 5: Final Morning and Departure

The Angkor National Museum in Siem Reap, on Charles de Gaulle Street, is a better use of a final morning than returning to a temple you have already seen. The collection contextualises the inscriptions and iconography you spent three days looking at without always understanding. Entry is USD 12. It opens at 8:30 am.

Chanrey Tree restaurant on Hap Guan Street near the Old Market serves home-style Khmer cooking in a traditional wooden house and is a solid final lunch: Tonle Sap steamed fish or beef lok lak in the USD 5 to 8 range.

Practical note on transport throughout: PassApp is the Cambodian equivalent of Grab and works for tuk-tuks and cars in Siem Reap. Fixed prices, no negotiation, no commission detours. Install it before you arrive. The standard tuk-tuk scam involves a driver who offers cheap rates and then stops at a gem shop or restaurant where he earns commission. Any driver who mentions a shop unprompted is working that angle.

US dollars circulate freely in Cambodia alongside the riel. Prices under USD 1 are often quoted in riel (4,000 KHR equals roughly USD 1). ATMs dispense dollars. Keep small bills because change in riel is common and mathematically confusing when tired.