Best Things to Do in Siem Reap

Siem Reap combines one of the world's greatest archaeological landscapes with flood-forest lake ecosystems and a dynamic modern arts scene. Alternate your major temple circuits with riverfront walks, village boat trips and evening performances.

1. Watch sunrise over the five lotus towers of Angkor Wat and read its bas-relief galleries. Stand beside the northern reflection pond as the sky turns violet and gold, then spend two hours walking anti-clockwise through the eight hundred metres of twelfth-century stone carvings including the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
2. Enter the South Gate of Angkor Thom to explore the Bayon. Cross the moat causeway lined with fifty-four stone gods and demons pulling the giant naga serpent, then step into the labyrinth of the Bayon where over two hundred serene stone faces gaze toward every compass point.
3. Walk beneath the giant silk-cotton and strangler-fig roots of Ta Prohm. Visit King Jayavarman VII's twelfth-century monastery early in the morning or late in the afternoon, where silver tree roots cascade like waterfalls over carved sandstone galleries.
4. Admire the pink sandstone filigree of Banteay Srei (Citadel of the Women). Drive north through rural sugar-palm villages to this tenth-century Hindu temple whose hard pinkish-red stone holds the sharpest, deepest three-dimensional lintel carvings in Cambodia.
5. Trace the Grand Circuit through Preah Khan, Neak Pean and East Mebon. Walk the vaulted axial corridors of vast Preah Khan, cross the wooden boardwalk to the island sanctuary of Neak Pean, and climb the elephant-guarded tiers of East Mebon.
6. Take a boat through the stilted houses and flooded forest of Kampong Phluk on Tonle Sap Lake. See ten-metre timber stilts rising above Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake, which expands more than fourfold during the monsoon pulse.
7. Experience Phare, the Cambodian Circus. Spend an evening under the big top watching graduates of Battambang's Phare Ponleu Selpak arts school blend high-energy acrobatics, live traditional percussion, theatre and contemporary storytelling (with zero animals).
8. Visit the Apopo Visitor Centre and the Angkor National Museum. Watch trained African giant pouched rats demonstrate how they safely sniff out landmines across rural Cambodia, and examine the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas and pre-Angkorian lintels at the museum.
9. Savour steamed fish amok and Kampot pepper dishes. Taste freshwater fish mousse steamed with kroeung lemongrass paste and coconut cream inside folded banana leaves.
10. Browse Made in Cambodia Market, Kandal Village and Artisans Angkor. Shop directly from Khmer ceramicists, silk weavers, stone carvers and spice blenders along the Siem Reap River.