Hello Friends,
When you search “best places to visit in Cambodia,” you get the same recycled list every time, written by people ranking places they’ve never set foot in. I live in Cambodia — I moved here at the end of 2025 and settled in Siem Reap — so I’m going to do this differently. I’ll put the places I’ve genuinely been up top, tell you the honest truth about them, and then be straight about the ones I’m still planning to reach rather than pretend I’ve already been. That’s a more useful list than another scraped top ten.
1. Siem Reap and the Angkor Temples
If you visit only one part of Cambodia, make it this one. Angkor is the reason the country is on anyone’s map, and it earns the reputation — it’s bigger, older, and more overwhelming than the photos suggest, spread across a huge park of temples where you could lose a week and not see it all. Beyond the icon of Angkor Wat, the must-sees are Ta Prohm with the jungle eating the stone, Bayon and its giant carved faces, and the walled complex of Angkor Thom. Push a little further out and you get Banteay Srei’s pink-sandstone carving and the jungle-swallowed ruin of Beng Mealea, both far quieter than the main circuit.
But Siem Reap is where I actually live, and my honest pitch is that the town itself is the half of the trip everyone underbudgets. There’s a whole place beyond the temples — markets, gardens, a genuine expat-and-local community, everyday life lived a little more gently than most. Start with my Siem Reap travel guide, then sort out how many days you actually need (three is the sweet spot), how to do the temples right, and when to come.
2. Koh Rong Sanloem and the Islands
Cambodia’s southern islands are the country’s answer to Thailand’s beaches — the same turquoise water and white sand, at a fraction of the price and with far more rough edges intact. This is a corner of Cambodia I know from the inside, because I lived on Koh Rong Sanloem for my first stretch in the country, and I’ll give you the real version rather than the brochure one. It’s stunning, it’s slow, and living on a remote island is genuinely harder than a week’s holiday makes it look.
- My first week on the island and the month-one reality check
- Getting sick out there — the part the postcards skip
- When paradise turns into a golden cage
For a first visit, most people ferry out of Sihanoukville (I spent a few days bouncing through there myself, back and forth to the island — it’s more a transit town than a destination, but you’ll likely pass through) and split time between the party-and-infrastructure hub of Koh Rong and the quieter Koh Rong Sanloem next door. My full Cambodia island-hopping guide covers the spread, from Saracen Bay to the back-to-basics islands like Koh Ta Kiev.
3. Phnom Penh
The capital is a proper city — bigger, louder, and more intense than Siem Reap, with real traffic and real height. Most travelers give it a day or two: the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, the National Museum’s Khmer sculpture, the riverside at dusk, and the essential, sobering history of Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields, which are hard but important for understanding modern Cambodia. My honest take is that Phnom Penh rewards walking more than checklist-ticking — when I finally went down, I skipped the itinerary and just wandered a bar lane, the riverside food stalls, and the markets, which is all in my Phnom Penh on foot write-up.
The Places I Haven’t Reached Yet (But Would Prioritize)
Here’s where I stop pretending. I live in Cambodia, but I haven’t been everywhere in it, and I’d rather flag the places I’m still planning to reach honestly than write you fake first-hand authority about them. These are the ones genuinely near the top of my own list, and I’d point a curious traveler toward them — just know this section is research and intention, not lived experience yet.
Battambang
Cambodia’s best-preserved colonial town, with French shophouse architecture, a relaxed riverside, and the famous “bamboo train” running on old railway track. It’s the classic recommendation for authentic provincial Cambodia without heavy tourism, and it’s high on my list precisely because it’s the kind of place that rewards slow days.
Kampot and Kep
Down on the south coast, Kampot is a riverside town famous for its world-class pepper farms and a laid-back pace that keeps long-term travelers hanging around. Neighboring Kep is tiny and known for one thing above all — the crab market, where fresh blue swimmer crab is cooked with green Kampot peppercorns. Bokor National Park’s misty mountain and abandoned French hill-station ruins sit right above Kampot. This is probably the next region I’ll actually get to.
Mondulkiri and the Northeast
For a completely different Cambodia — cooler hills, rolling green, and ethnic-minority communities — the northeastern provinces of Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri are the draw. Mondulkiri is best known for ethical elephant sanctuaries like the Elephant Valley Project, where you observe rescued elephants in the forest rather than ride them. Ratanakiri adds crater lakes and remote jungle. It’s a longer haul from the tourist triangle, which is exactly why it stays authentic.
The Remote Temples
If Angkor gives you the temple bug, Cambodia has plenty more away from the crowds: Koh Ker, a former capital with a jungle pyramid; Sambor Prei Kuk, older than Angkor itself; Preah Vihear, dramatically perched on a clifftop on the Thai border; and Banteay Chhmar, a vast, barely-visited complex with community-run tourism. These take real effort to reach, which is the whole point.
The Wild Corners
For wilderness, the Cardamom Mountains hold Southeast Asia’s largest remaining rainforest, with community-based trekking out of villages like Chi Phat. And up on the Mekong at Kratie, you can see rare Irrawaddy river dolphins — one of the region’s most unusual wildlife encounters. Both are firmly on the “someday soon” list.
How to Put a Trip Together
For most first visits, the honest answer is: don’t try to see all of it. Anchor on the temple-and-town experience in Siem Reap, add a couple of days in Phnom Penh, and finish with beach time on the islands — that triangle is comfortable in about ten days and covers everything I’d call unmissable. If you’ve got longer or you’re coming back, that’s when the second tier earns its place: Battambang on the way between Siem Reap and the coast, Kampot and Kep as a southern add-on, or the northeast as a dedicated slow-travel leg.
For the practical side of stitching it together — how long to give it, when to go, getting around, money, and visas — see my Cambodia travel guide. And if you want the full index of everywhere I’ve actually been on the ground here, it’s threaded through my Siem Reap guide and the island write-ups above. The best places to visit in Cambodia aren’t a fixed top-ten list — they’re wherever your interests and honest time budget meet the country’s genuine range. Come curious, weight it toward what you love, and leave room for the unplanned. Cheers.
