Local guide
Things to Do in Siem Reap: A Local's Guide
Every list looks the same, and every tour hits the same temples at the same hour. This is a local's guide to the things to do in Siem Reap that are worth your time, and how to do them without the crowds.
1. Angkor Wat, but not when everyone else goes
Angkor Wat is the reason you came. Fair. It is also the reason most lists of things to do in Siem Reap barely mention anything else. The mistake is not going, the mistake is going when everyone else goes. The crowds move on a schedule, and once you have lived here long enough you know it without checking a watch: sunrise crowd at the reflecting pool, then the same three stops in the same order. The complex is enormous and the crowds stick to maybe a tenth of it. That routing is most of what you pay a local guide for. See how we run the day on our Angkor Temples Day Tour, or catch the quiet on the Private Sunrise Tour.
2. The temples beyond Angkor Wat
Most visitors never leave the main complex, which is strange to me, because the outer temples are where I would take a friend first. Banteay Srei is small, pink sandstone, and carries the finest carving in the country. Angkor Thom has the Bayon and its smiling faces. Ta Prohm is the one with trees growing through the walls, and it is worth the trip on its own if you get the hour right. Get the hour wrong and you queue behind fifty people for the same photo. Which ones to prioritise, and the order to see them in, is the whole point of our Angkor temples guide.
3. The floating village and the countryside
The floating villages get done badly a lot. Overpriced boat loops, staged photo stops. Done right, a floating village is still one of the best things to do in Siem Reap, and how to visit one responsibly is worth reading before you book anything. Our Village and Community Visit goes to Kampong Khleang, a village people live and work in, and 5% of every booking is set aside for schools and clean water in village communities around Siem Reap. Once the temples start to blur, the countryside itself is the move: the waterfalls up at Phnom Kulen, or a slow ride out past the villages.
4. Eat where locals eat
Pub Street is fine for a night out. I am not going to pretend otherwise, sometimes you want a cold beer on a loud street. But the best food is in the markets and side streets the tour restaurants skip. Our Food and Market Tour is the shortcut. The first thing I order for guests is the roasted beef. It looks like a plain well done strip, the kind you would write off at home, but it has a tenderness that surprises people, and you eat it with fresh vegetables and the fermented fish sauce we Cambodians love. I took a group of Chinese guests through once and the beef soup was what they talked about after. They said it was like nothing they had eaten before. If you would rather wander it yourself, where locals eat in Siem Reap is what I order and where I go.
5. Practical tips before you go
The Angkor park pass is a government ticket, separate from any tour, and it comes in 1, 3 and 7 day versions. No tour price includes it, ours included. Midday is hotter than the photos warn you; early morning and late afternoon have the good light and the bearable heat. How long to give the whole trip is its own question, so here is how many days Siem Reap really needs.
The way I would do Siem Reap
You can piece all of this together yourself. Plenty of people do, and it works. Or you spend the day with a certified local who already knows the timing, so your energy goes to the temples instead of the logistics. Meet your guide and see Siem Reap the way we see it.