Phnom Penh

A working capital where three rivers meet, with the best Khmer sculpture in the world in one building and the country’s hardest history in two others.

Start planning your trip

Phnom Penh

A capital where three rivers meet

Phnom Penh stands at the point the Khmer call the four faces: the Mekong arrives from the north, the Tonle Sap river joins it from the west, and the two leave again as the Mekong and the Bassac. Once a year the Tonle Sap river runs backwards and fills the lake behind it — the piece of hydrology the country’s rice and fish have depended on for a thousand years, and which the city still marks with a boat festival.

What that produces is a working capital rather than a visitor town: traffic, construction, a river promenade full of people at six, and a food scene that has moved a long way in a decade. Travellers arriving from Siem Reap often find it abrasive for an afternoon and then stop noticing. Two nights is right for most routes.

Palm trees line a riverside promenade in Phnom Penh as locals gather along the Mekong bank.

The golden-spired throne hall of the Royal Palace complex rises above manicured gardens in Phnom Penh.

The riverfront · The Royal Palace

History

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek

Tuol Sleng was a secondary school until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and interrogation centre. Thousands of people were held, tortured and killed there over the next four years; very few came out. Choeung Ek, fifteen kilometres south, is the orchard where most of the prisoners were taken to be executed and buried, one of several hundred such sites across the country. Both are memorials now and both are plainly presented: the photographs, the cells and the excavated graves are there to be looked at.

These are demanding places. People come out of them quiet, and some want to see nothing else that day. Take the audio guide at both — it is narrated in part by survivors and it is the difference between horror and understanding. Allow half a day, go in the morning, and plan nothing that needs concentration afterwards. We do not recommend either site for young children, and we say so at the planning stage rather than at the gate.

The National Museum

What to do

The rest of the two days

The National Museum holds the best collection of Khmer sculpture anywhere, and it is the most useful hour in the country if you take it before Angkor rather than after: the statues here are the ones missing from the temples. Next door, the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda are a working royal residence — part closed, a dress code of covered shoulders and knees, and shut over the middle of the day. Go early.

The National Museum, an hour and a half, before you see the temples.
The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, an hour, early, dressed for it.
The Russian Market for cloth and silver; the Central Market for the 1937 art deco dome rather than the merchandise.
An hour on the river at dusk — the one thing here that is purely pleasant.
The shooting ranges outside the city, advertised everywhere, which we will not book.

The art deco dome of Phsar Thmey (Central Market) rises above market stalls in Phnom Penh under a blue sky. — Central Market

Planning

When to come, and how long to stay

The seasons are those of lowland Cambodia, but the city feels them more: dry and bearable from November, genuinely hot from March with streets that hold heat into the night, and from June heavy late storms that flood some roads for an hour at a time. September and October are the wettest weeks and the months the rivers are at their most impressive.

Two nightsThe standard: palace and museum on one day, the memorials and a market on the other.

One nightOnly as a stop between Siem Reap and Vietnam, and it means choosing between the museum and the memorial sites.

Three nightsBuys a day trip — Oudong, the old capital, or Koh Dach island — and an unscheduled evening.

November to FebruaryDry and comfortable. The water festival in November fills every hotel in the city.

Borders

The junction: road, river and the Vietnamese gate

Phnom Penh is where a Cambodian route decides what it becomes: southwest to the pepper coast, southeast to Vietnam, northeast up the Mekong towards Laos, or back to Siem Reap. Bavet is the busiest land border in mainland Southeast Asia and one of only two Cambodian gates where the e-visa is accepted, which is why so many two-country trips are built around it.

Onward leg	How long	What to know
Bavet to Moc Bai, for Ho Chi Minh City	6 to 7 hours by road	The Cambodian e-visa is accepted here; a Vietnamese e-visa must name Moc Bai.
Kampot and Kep	3 to 3.5 hours by road	The coast route, and the way towards Ha Tien and Phu Quoc.
Siem Reap	5.5 to 6 hours by road, or 45 minutes by air	Battambang splits the drive if you would rather not fly.
Chau Doc, Vietnam, by river	About 5 hours on the Bassac	Seasonal; immigration is cleared at a river post.

Checked 20 September 2026

Cambodia sells no visa-free entry to European, North American, Australian or Northeast Asian passports. The e-visa is 30 days, single entry, and accepted at Bavet and Trapeang Kriel and at no other land gate — at Prek Chak, the crossing for Ha Tien and Phu Quoc, it is a visa on arrival in US dollars cash with a passport photo. We do not publish fees: your coordinator confirms the current figure.

Two nights, then the road east.

Plan My Trip

Tell us your dates

We will tell you whether to drive to Vietnam or fly, and how to order the two difficult hours.

Plan My Trip

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Should I visit Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek?

Most travellers should, and almost all are glad they did — the two sites together are the clearest account of what happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, and they are presented without euphemism.

They are demanding. Take the audio guides, go in the morning, leave the rest of the day loose, and do not take young children.

Is two nights enough in Phnom Penh?

Yes for a route that is heading on to Vietnam or the coast. Two full days cover the palace, the National Museum, the two memorial sites and a market, with one evening on the river left over.

Is the road to Ho Chi Minh City straightforward?

It is the most-used land crossing in the region: six to seven hours door to door, with the border in the middle. The Cambodian e-visa is valid at Bavet, and a Vietnamese e-visa has to name Moc Bai as the entry gate when you apply, because the gates cannot be changed afterwards.

Journey ideas