Is Battambang worth the night?

Yes, if you are driving between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh anyway. It turns two long road days into two short ones and gives you the best colonial streets in Cambodia in between. It is not worth a detour of its own from anywhere else.

Can we take the river boat instead of the road?

From roughly August to November, when the water is high, a boat runs the Sangker river between Siem Reap and Battambang in about seven hours through villages and flooded forest. It is a far better day than the road and it does not run at all in the dry season. Tell us your month and we will tell you which you are getting.

Could we finish in Vietnam rather than fly out of Phnom Penh?

Yes, and it is the better ending. Prek Chak is about an hour from Kep, Ha Tien is eight kilometres beyond, and the fast ferry reaches Phu Quoc in about an hour and a quarter. It needs a Vietnamese e-visa naming Ha Tien as the entry gate, decided before the visa is issued, and a Cambodian visa on arrival if you are entering Cambodia that way instead.

How hard is day six, really?

It is two hours at the memorials, lunch, and three and a half hours in a car, and most people find the drive a relief rather than a chore. We do not put anything else in the day and we do not book an activity that evening.

Angkor to the Coast, 8 Days

Overview

The country between the temples and the sea

Almost everyone who visits Cambodia sees Angkor, spends a night in Phnom Penh and flies out, which is a reasonable use of four days and leaves the country itself unvisited. This route drives the length of it instead. Battambang breaks the long northwestern road and turns out to be the best colonial streets in the country. The capital is a night and one hard morning rather than an airport transfer. And the last two nights are on the pepper coast at Kampot and Kep, which is where Cambodians themselves go when they stop working.

The price is two road days and one genuinely hard one, and we would rather name it here than bury it. Day six starts at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek and ends three and a half hours south on the coast, which is a lot to carry in twelve hours. Everything after it is slow on purpose.

Shuttered French colonial shophouses along a street in Battambang, Cambodia

Baskets of blue crab at the crab market on the shore at Kep, southern Cambodia

Battambang · Kep

Length: 8 days, 7 nights
Group: Private, up to 12
Starts: Siem Reap
Ends: Kampot
Internal flights: None
Best months: November to February

Nights

The nights, in order

Siem Reap3 nightsTwo temple mornings and a third day you choose.→Battambang1 nightShophouse streets, rice country and the bat cave at dusk.→Phnom Penh1 nightThe riverfront, and the memorials the next morning.→Kampot & Kep2 nightsPepper, crab, the river and Bokor if the cloud lifts.

Day by day

What happens each day

Day 1

Into Siem Reap

Going to bed before ten, which pays for itself tomorrow

The new airport is well east of the town and the transfer takes about an hour, not the fifteen minutes the older books describe. Nothing is scheduled. Eat early: the park opens at half past five and the first morning is the best one.

StayHotel in Siem ReapMealsNone includedTravelAbout 1 hour from Siem Reap–Angkor airport

Day 2

Angkor Thom first, Angkor Wat last

The Bayon before eight, and Angkor Wat after four

Angkor Thom at opening, because the Bayon’s faces are best in the first two hours and the walled city takes a crowd better than anywhere else in the park. Then the terraces and Ta Prohm, forty minutes, while the trees are still quiet. The middle of the day is off. Angkor Wat late in the afternoon from the west, which is the way it was built to be approached.

StayHotel in Siem ReapMealsBreakfast, lunchOn foot6 to 8 km across the day, on uneven stone

Day 3

Banteay Srei, and the temple nobody rebuilt

Beng Mealea, where nothing has been put back

An hour northeast to Banteay Srei at opening — small, pink, and carved more finely than anything else in the country. On the way back, Preah Khan and Neak Pean are quiet at midday. If you would rather have one temple than three, Beng Mealea is collapsed, unrestored and largely empty, and it is the half-day that separates a good Angkor visit from a standard one. The afternoon is free.

StayHotel in Siem ReapMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelAbout 1 hour each way

Day 4

Southwest to Battambang

The bats leaving Phnom Sampov at dusk

Three hours by road, or seven by river boat from roughly August to November, which is a far better day and the reason to ask about your month. Battambang is Cambodia’s second city and does not behave like one: a few blocks of two-storey French shophouses on the Sangker river, a 1930s market hall, and no crowd. Ninety minutes on foot covers it. At five, Phnom Sampov — the hill temples, the killing caves, and at the foot of it a cave mouth from which several million bats pour out in a ribbon that takes half an hour to pass.

StayHotel in a restored building, BattambangMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelAbout 3 hours from Siem ReapOn footAbout 2 km in the town, plus 350 steps if you take Wat Banan

Day 5

Rice country, and the road to the capital

The lanes through the rice country before the heat

A morning through the rice bowl by tuk-tuk or bicycle: lanes to villages that make fish paste, rice paper and palm sugar, and a short run on the bamboo railway, which is a purpose-built replacement on a spur near Wat Banan rather than the improvised original — five minutes each way, enjoyable, and not what the older photographs show. Then five hours southeast to Phnom Penh, arriving for dinner on the riverfront.

StayHotel on or near the riverfront, Phnom PenhMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelAbout 5 hours, Battambang to Phnom Penh

Day 6

The memorials, and the road south

The river at Kampot in the last light, after a long day

The hardest day of the eight. Tuol Sleng in the morning, a secondary school until 1975, then Choeung Ek fifteen kilometres south. Take the audio guide at both; it is narrated in part by survivors and it is the difference between horror and understanding. Lunch, and then three to three and a half hours to Kampot, arriving in the early evening. We schedule it this way deliberately: an afternoon in a car with nothing to do is a better thing to have after those two hours than another appointment.

StayRiverside hotel, KampotMealsBreakfast, lunchTravel3 to 3.5 hours, Phnom Penh to Kampot

Day 7

Pepper, crab and a mountain that may be in cloud

Crab with green pepper at Kep, which is the best meal in the south

A pepper smallholding in the hills between the two towns, where the growers explain the three colours properly; Kampot pepper is a protected origin product and it is genuinely the best in the world rather than marketed as such. Then Kep for lunch at the crab market, cooked with green pepper twenty metres from the boats. The afternoon is the ruined 1960s villas in the trees, or Bokor if the plateau is clear — a thousand metres up, an abandoned French hill station, and cloud for much of the year. We check the mountain in the morning and say plainly if it is not worth the drive.

StayRiverside hotel, KampotMealsBreakfast, lunchTravel40 minutes to Kep; 1 hour each way if Bokor is clear

Day 8

Out, or on into Vietnam

Finishing on a coast rather than in a terminal

Two endings. The ordinary one is three to three and a half hours back to Phnom Penh for an afternoon or evening flight. The better one, if the trip is not over, is east instead: the Prek Chak gate is about an hour from Kep, Ha Tien is eight kilometres beyond it, and the fast ferry from there reaches Phu Quoc in about an hour and a quarter. That crossing needs a Vietnamese e-visa that named Ha Tien as the entry gate before it was issued.

MealsBreakfastTravel3 to 3.5 hours to Phnom Penh airport, or about 1 hour to the Prek Chak gate

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Paperwork

Entry, and the two gates that matter

Cambodia charges everybody, and its e-visa is accepted at far fewer land gates than travellers expect. If this route continues into Vietnam, the gate it uses is not one of them.

No visa exemption for European, North American, Australian or Northeast Asian passports. Everybody pays.
The e-visa is 30 days, single entry, and takes about a week to be safe. Visa on arrival is available at the three international airports and the main land gates, in US dollars cash with a passport photo.
The e-arrival card applies to air arrivals only, filed within seven days. Your hotel registers you with the foreigner registration system.
The Cambodian e-visa is accepted at two land gates only: Bavet, from Vietnam, and Trapeang Kriel, from Laos. Prek Chak, the gate for Ha Tien and Phu Quoc, is not one of them — entering Cambodia there is a visa on arrival, so carry dollars and a photo.
Going the other way, a Vietnamese e-visa fixes its entry and exit gates when you apply and they cannot be changed afterwards. A Ha Tien crossing has to be decided before the visa is issued, weeks before you travel.
The Thailand – Cambodia land border has been closed to tourists since 23 June 2025 at both Poipet and Cham Yeam. Poipet is two and a half hours west of Battambang and is not an option in either direction.

Checked 20 September 2026

We do not publish visa fees. The current figures are on the official Cambodian and Vietnamese portals, and your coordinator confirms them in writing, with the documents each gate on your route needs and when to file them.

Pictures

What the eight days look like

Angkor

Battambang

Phnom Sampov

Phnom Penh

Kampot

Baskets of blue crab at the shore crab market at Kep, southern Cambodia

Kep

Cost

How we quote it

Travellers	Comfortable hotels	Boutique and luxury
2 travellers	On request	On request
4 – 6 travellers	On request	On request

Every route is quoted for your own dates, party size and hotel standard, itemised.

Two of these seven nights are in towns with no luxury tier at all — Battambang has a handful of good rooms in restored buildings and nothing above them, and Kampot is the same. That narrows the columns in the middle of the trip and widens them at Siem Reap. Ask and the figure comes back within a working day, itemised, with every hotel named.

Included

What the quote covers

What the price includes

Private air-conditioned car and driver for all eight days, including the three long road legs and every excursion.
An English-speaking licensed Cambodian guide at Angkor for both temple days, in Battambang, in Phnom Penh and on the pepper coast.
The three-day Angkor pass, valid on any three days within ten, bought at the official ticket office with your photograph taken.
Seven nights with breakfast: three in Siem Reap, one in a restored building at Battambang, one on the Phnom Penh riverfront and two on the river at Kampot.
Lunch on every full day, and at the Kep crab market on day seven.
The Sangker river boat from Siem Reap to Battambang instead of the road, where the water is high enough — roughly August to November — at no change to the quote.
Entrance fees to everything named above, including Beng Mealea, Phnom Sampov, Wat Banan, Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek with audio guides at both, and a pepper smallholding.
Either the transfer back to Phnom Penh airport on day eight, or the run to the Prek Chak gate with the Vietnamese side arranged.
A coordinator on a Cambodian number for the whole trip, and a written note of which visa each gate on your route needs and when to file it.

What it does not include

International flights into the first city and out of the last.
Visa fees and entry charges. We do not publish these figures — the current ones are on the government’s official portal, and your coordinator confirms them in writing before you travel.
Travel insurance, which we ask every traveller to hold.
Meals not named in the day-by-day, and all drinks.
Tips for guides, drivers and boat crew.
Personal expenses: laundry, telephone, spa treatments, anything bought.

Straight talk

Who should not book this route

This is a driving trip through a poor country with two difficult mornings in it. Five travellers should take the six-day route or something else entirely.

Anyone who will not spend three afternoons in a car. Days four, five and six are three hours, five hours and three and a half hours respectively, on roads that are adequate rather than good. Flying Siem Reap to Phnom Penh takes forty-five minutes and removes the whole middle of this itinerary, which is also the point of it.
Families with young children. We do not recommend Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for young children and the sixth day is built around them, with a long drive afterwards. The six-day route has the same problem in a smaller dose; a coastal week with the temples and no memorials is the honest family version, and we will build it.
Anyone who wants a beach at the end. Kampot and Kep are not beach towns: the water is brown with river silt and the sand is thin. This coast is pepper, crab, ruins and a river. For sand, carry on to Phu Quoc, which is a border and a ferry away.
Anyone travelling between June and October who is coming for Bokor. The plateau sits in cloud almost daily in those months and there is nothing up there when it does. We check on the morning and will tell you not to bother.
Travellers with a wheelchair or serious mobility limits. Angkor is uneven stone, Phnom Sampov is a hill, the bamboo railway is boarded from track level, and the crab market is a working jetty.

Two road days, and a country instead of a temple park.

Plan My Trip

Start from this route

Tell us your dates and whether Vietnam follows. We will send a quote and an amended day-by-day within a working day.

Plan My Trip

Angkor to the coast in eight days