Overnight Getaways in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Three days at Angkor is enough for most people, and the good things after that begin about two hours out. North of the plain the road climbs to the Dangrek escarpment, where Preah Vihear stands on a 500-metre cliff looking into Thailand. East, the pyramid at Koh Ker rises seven tiers out of forest that was briefly a capital in the tenth century. South-west lies Battambang, with low colonial streets and a circus school. All of them work far better with a night at the end than squeezed into one long day.
North and east
Koh Ker is roughly two and a half hours by road and Preah Vihear about two hours beyond it, so pairing them over two days with a night in Sra Em is the standard run; a private car and driver is the practical way, and drivers quote for the whole trip rather than by the hour. Beng Mealea, collapsed and root-bound some 65 km east, slots in on the way out. Further north-west, Banteay Chhmar — an enormous, half-ruined Jayavarman VII temple with face towers — runs a community homestay scheme where beds and meals are in village houses and the money stays in the village.
South and on the water
Battambang is about three hours by road, or, when the water is high from roughly August into January, seven to nine hours by boat down the Sangker River past floating schools and stilt villages — slow, hard-seated and easily the most interesting transport in Cambodia. The town keeps its French shophouse grid, the Phare Ponleu Selpak circus school that trained Siem Reap's performers, and a bamboo railway that has moved sites more than once, so check where it is running. Closer to home, Kampong Khleang on the Tonlé Sap, about 50 km out, has homestays on stilts, and Prek Toal's bird sanctuary repays an overnight because the colonies are best just after dawn.