Cambodia in Under a Week: Angkor Wat Temples and Phnom Penh Killing Fields

Visited: November 9-15, 2024

Cambodia was a last minute addition to our trip. Nate wasn’t as interested in Cambodia, but I had wanted to visit the country ever since learning about its history in high school. And I had always wanted to visit Angkor Wat. We are both so glad we squeezed it in! I was blown away by the grandeur, beauty, and scale of the temples. Despite visiting almost a dozen different temples, each one felt so unique. We were also deeply moved by the horrific, genocidal history of the Killing fields. 

Arriving in Siem Reap

We flew from Hanoi to Siem Reap, the second largest city in Cambodia. Siem Reap is a popular tourist destination because the city is next to the Angkor Wat complex. I did not do much research into Siem Reap, so I was surprised by how big, bustling, and modern it was, at least in the touristy city center. 

We arrived in the afternoon, so all we did on the first day was check into our hotel and eat dinner. We found a Korean restaurant nearby, so after weeks of eating Vietnamese food (which was good but didn’t always sit well with me) I was ready for some familiar food. We hashed out our plan for the next three days over dinner. As I’ve mentioned before, we are generally not “temple” people in that although we enjoy visiting churches/temples/mosques/etc., we usually cannot spend endless hours in them. So we weren’t sure how much time we’d want to spend in the Angkor Wat complex and decided to take it day by day and not pressure ourselves to do too much. 

Day 1: Angkor National Museum and Angkor Wat Temple

On our first day of sightseeing, we ate local food for breakfast before heading to our first destination: the Angkor National Museum. I thought that it would be nice to learn more about history and context before visiting the temples. A common misconception is that there is one Angkor Wat temple, but there are 72 temples within the Angkor Wat Complex (or Angkor Archaeological Park), including the most famous Angkor Wat. 

To get to the museum, we talked to one of the tuk tuk drivers on the street and struck a deal for him to take us to the museum. Tuk tuks are three-wheeled vehicles used like taxis used everywhere in Cambodia. We spent around two hours in the museum which was quite big and informative. The Khmer empire has a long history of Hinduism and Buddhism so Angkor Wat and many temples were originally constructed as Hindu temples and converted to Buddhist temples over time. Angkor was also the capital of the Khmer empire with a population of up to a million people. So this area is incredibly significant historically and culturally. There was too much information to truly soak in and digest, but I really enjoyed seeing all the artifacts in the museum.

After the museum, we decided to only visit the Angkor Wat temple as we were tired and it was getting very hot. Our tuk tuk driver was waiting for us outside (even though we told him not to) so he took us to Angkor Wat which took about 15/20-min. He dropped us off at the start of the long path to the temple entrance. Standing there, looking down the path, I already knew that it was worth coming to Cambodia. Angkor Wat looked so magnificent in the distance. We were very sweaty by the time we finally made it to the entrance where I realized just how big this temple was. Excitedly, we took the first of many pictures.

Inside the outer wall was a huge grassy area with the main temple buildings in the center. In the center, we walked through the various buildings and climbed up a tower and explored inside. I was struck by how intricately designed everything was. The wall carved drawings were amazing. I couldn’t believe that we were allowed to walk through so much of the temple. Fortunately, it did seem that most tourists were being respectful. And there were a lot of staff stationed around keeping an eye out.

Once we were too hot and tired, we left and returned to our hotel. The Cambodian heat and humidity is no joke! After cooling off in our air-conditioned room, we went to a local restaurant for food. I tried the fish amok (Cambodian steam fish curry) which was quite good, but not as good as I had hoped. Nate had a beef dish he loved. And we had cold Angkor beers to complement.

After dinner, we walked around town a bit to see the night food market along the river and through Pub Street. Yes, there is an entire long street packed with western bars and neon lights. We ended up at a craft gelateria for a yummy dessert.

Day 2: Bayon, Preah Khan, Ta Prohm, and Banteay Kdei

We were so excited to see more temples after being blown away at Angkor Wat. We arranged to have our same tuk tuk driver take us around all day. It is very common to go on all day tours (around 6 hours) along standardized routes, the red and green tours that are within the Angkor Complex. It seemed like all tuk tuk drivers had the same tour sheet and map.

We decided to do the red tour but swap out Ta Keo for Preah Khan to prioritize seeing the temples we were most interested in based on online research. The drive through the complex to the temples itself was a great experience, being able to see the area in the open air with a breeze. 

Bayon was the first stop. It is located within the walls of Angkor Thom (old Khmer capital) so crossing the bridge and the gates was very cool. 

Bayon was incredible. It has huge carvings of human faces at the top of the towers which was very impressive to see in person. It was much smaller than Angkor Wat, but was no less impressive. I really loved this one and we were luckily early enough that it wasn’t too crowded.

From Bayon, we walked by a few smaller temples within the walls of Angkor Thom like Phimenakas, Terrace of the Elephants, and Terrace of the Leper King before meeting back up with our driver to go to Preah Khan.

Preah Khan was pretty big and felt more like temple ruins. There was a lot of moss and vegetation that had grown on the structures and fallen stones scattered about. There were even huge trees that had grown on and around the structures with roots hugging walls. It was so cool to walk around and explore this temple. So far, we were loving seeing the different temples.

We were exhausted and hungry by the time we were done with Preah Khan. There were a couple restaurants across the street, so we stopped for lunch before continuing on our way.

Next, we went to Ta Phrom, probably the second most famous temple of Angkor. Ta Phrom’s claim to fame is that this is where Tomb Raider was filmed. So it is known as one of the temples with the iconic temple ruins look. As expected, it was packed with people and was the most crowded temple we visited except for Angkor Wat. It was so much fun walking around the temple. It was big and felt even more like nature had taken over the temple with fallen structures and trees growing all over the place. Whenever we happened to be alone in an area, it made me feel like we had truly stumbled upon a lost temple.

After Ta Phrom, we were pretty tired, but had one more temple to visit – Banteay Kdei. Banteay Kdei was smaller but still with sizable grounds. It was a very nice temple, but we didn’t find it quite as impressive as the others we had seen. 

On the way back to town, we made one last stop by a huge reservoir filled with water. It was beautiful but also amazing to think about its history. This reservoir was man made to provide water for irrigation in the region. I am always blown away reflecting on human ingenuity and effort that allowed for such amazing engineering and infrastructure feats in the past that allowed for thriving civilizations.

The entire temple tour took about five hours and we were ready to be done by the day. It gets so hot and humid in the afternoon. For dinner, we went to a restaurant serving western food for chicken sandwiches that were decent.

Day 3: Neak Poan, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup

On our last full day in Siem Reap, we decided to take it easy in the morning as we were quite physically exhausted from the two days of temple exploration. We slept in and went for massages and then had a leisurely working lunch at a nice cafe with air conditioning.

After lunch, we were feeling rejuvenated and decided to go for one more outing to the temples. We called our trusty tuk tuk driver and we visited four temples in the afternoon.

First, we went to Neak Poan which is a temple on an island in the middle of a big reservoir. The reservoir was stunning with all the lily pads and dead trees poking out from the water. The dead trees made the sight reminiscent of Deadvlei in Sossusvlei in Namibia. There is a long walkway to get to the temple and it was a very nice walk. The temple itself was pretty small in terms of the number and size of structures.

Next, we went to Ta Som which felt similar to Preah Khan in terms of the level of restoration and semi-wildness. There weren’t many people so it was really fun to wander about and feel like we were there by ourselves.

Our third stop was East Mebon.which was a smaller, terraced temple. It is stylistically different from most of the temples we visited. This was a really cool temple with elephant statues and symmetric towers. We really enjoyed this one.

Our final stop was at Pre Rup where we waited to see the sunset. Pre Rup is stylistically and architecturally similar to East Mebon. We climbed to the top level and found a place to sit facing the jungle westward for sunset. It was so pretty to see the jungle in the orange light at sunset. And the drive back to town was beautiful as well.

For our final dinner, we went to a Cambodian restaurant and turned in for the night pretty early after a quick stroll around town. We had an early bus to catch to Phnom Penh in the morning.

Two Mostly Leisurely Days in Phnom Penh

We took a 6+ hour bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. I thought we booked a nice, spacious bus, but it was a small van which was disappointing. But it was okay. We arrived at a bus station in Siem Reap and we called a Grab tuk tuk to take us to our hotel.

Hotels in Siem Reap are relatively affordable so we decided to spend a bit more for a nice apartment with in-unit laundry and a rooftop pool. We spent the day as a rest day, enjoying the nice accommodations. By the time we checked in, it was well past lunchtime and we were so hungry. It was so hot so we decided to order food via Grab. We saw a highly rated Mexican spot closeby, so despite our reservations, we ordered California burritos. They were definitely not California burritos, but it wasn’t bad. We relaxed in our apartment and then checked out the nice rooftop pool and had a cold beer. We got dinner at a nearby restaurant and went directly back to enjoy the night city views from the roof.

The next day we went to visit the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center outside of Phnom Penh. This is the location of one of the many killing fields where thousands were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. This Center is absolutely amazing at telling the story of what happened. We did the walking audio tour where we stopped at designated points and learned about what happened here and heard personal stories of survivors. It was a very solemn and depressing experience being in the place of such evil and suffering. We could still see pieces of bone and clothing from the murdered people poking out from the ground. The staff do pickup and artifacts regularly, but new ones keep getting exposed. There is a stupa in the center displaying the skulls of over 5,000 victims which was so powerful to see. I highly recommend visiting the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center if you visit Phnom Penh. It is not an easy or fun experience, but I think it is so important to learn about this history and remember how recent such atrocities occurred – in the 1975-79. We did not take any pictures here as it did not feel appropriate and we were too immersed in the audio tour to think about pictures.

We were going to also visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which is in a former high school that was turned into the Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge where over 20,000 people were imprisoned. However, we were tired and emotionally drained after the killing field so we decided to just go back to the apartment to eat and rest.

For lunch, we walked to a nearby pizza shop which had decent pizza. Then I got some cookies from a bakery on the way back to the hotel. We relaxed at the pool for the rest of the afternoon then went to have delicious Indian food for dinner. A part of me wanted to do more sightseeing in Phnom Penh, but we were in our tired phase of travel and the heat deterred us from leaving our comfortable apartment. 

The next morning, we said goodbye to Cambodia as we headed to the airport to head to Taiwan. Although we had a short trip in Cambodia, I thought it was amazing and am so glad we went. In hindsight, I do wish I had gone out to explore Phnom Penh, but I know resting was the right decision at the moment. I guess we’ll just have to go back to Cambodia!

You can see more footage of the Angkor Wat temples in Nate’s vlog: