Travel and Tourism in Cambodia

Phnom Penh: The City of Memory and Renewal

Phnom Penh sits at one of the most strategically important river junctions in Southeast Asia, where the Tonle Sap River meets the Mekong just before the Mekong splits into the Upper and Lower Mekong channels that form the Mekong Delta. This location has made the city a natural center of trade and administration since the Khmer court moved here from Angkor in the fifteenth century, and the confluence of rivers — visible from the riverside promenade — remains one of the city's most striking geographical features.

Riverside and the City's Character

Phnom Penh has been substantially transformed over the past two decades from a shabby post-conflict city into a genuinely cosmopolitan capital with excellent restaurants, hotels, and cultural attractions. The riverside Sisowath Quay, lined with colonial-era buildings and modern cafes, is one of the most pleasant urban waterfront promenades in Southeast Asia. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Cambodia, housed in a colonial building on the quay, is one of the most atmospheric bars in Asia, its open balconies looking out over the river confluence where the Tonle Sap meets the Mekong.

The Central Market, known in Khmer as Psar Thmey and in French as Marché Central, is housed in a remarkable art deco building from 1937 with a large central dome in yellow concrete and four long wings radiating outward. Inside, the market sells jewelry, silks, electronics, and food in the rather chaotic fashion of Cambodian markets, but the architecture alone is worth a visit. Phnom Penh's numerous other markets — Psar Tuol Tom Poung (the Russian Market), Psar O Russei, Psar Kandal — offer the full range of Cambodian commercial life.

Sambor Prei Kuk: Cambodia's Second UNESCO World Heritage Site

Approximately 170 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, in the Kompong Thom province of central Cambodia, lies one of the most significant and least-visited UNESCO World Heritage Sites in all of Southeast Asia: Sambor Prei Kuk, the ancient city that preceded Angkor by several centuries and whose temples represent the crucial developmental period in which Khmer architecture evolved toward its ultimate classical form.

Sambor Prei Kuk, whose name translates approximately as the Forest Temple of the Good Luck Tree, was the capital of the pre-Angkor Chenla kingdom during the late sixth and seventh centuries CE, when it was known as Ishanapura under King Isanavarman I. At its height, the city covered an area of at least 25 square kilometers and contained hundreds of temples organized within octagonal earthwork enclosures, a unique architectural feature found nowhere else in Khmer archaeology. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017 as the Temple Zone of Sambor Prei Kuk, Archaeological Site of Ancient Ishanapura, recognizing it as an outstanding example of the development of pre-Angkor art and architecture that directly influenced the subsequent Angkor civilization.

The temples at Sambor Prei Kuk are organized into three main groups, each within its own octagonal earthwork enclosure: Prasat Sambor in the north, Prasat Tao in the center, and Prasat Yeay Peau in the south. The temples are built in brick rather than the sandstone of later Angkor structures, and while many are in poor condition — the tropical climate and vegetation have taken a heavy toll over fourteen centuries — the finest of them display a sculptural quality in their carved decorations that directly anticipates the achievements of Angkor. The so-called flying palaces, elaborate carved images of heavenly dwelling-places that appear on the lintels of the Sambor Prei Kuk temples, are among the most distinctive and technically accomplished decorative elements in early Khmer architecture.

Because Sambor Prei Kuk receives far fewer visitors than Angkor, the experience of wandering through its scattered temples in the shade of large trees, with the sounds of the forest all around and often no other visitors in sight, has a contemplative quality that the busier Angkor sites cannot match. The journey from Phnom Penh or Siem Reap through the flat Cambodian countryside, past rice paddies and sugar palms and small villages, is itself a rewarding experience for travelers who want to see rural Cambodia beyond the tourist infrastructure.

Kep and Rabbit Island

A short distance east of Kampot along the coast, the small resort town of Kep was similarly built by the French as a colonial beach retreat and similarly abandoned and damaged during the wars, its white villas overgrown with vegetation and its beach modest by Southeast Asian standards. What distinguishes Kep today is its extraordinary crab market, where fishing boats bring their catch directly to a strip of restaurants at the water's edge and the blue-swimming crabs of the Gulf of Thailand are cooked and served with Kampot pepper in a combination that many visitors describe as the single most delicious dish they eat in all of Cambodia.

Koh Tonsay, known to tourists as Rabbit Island, lies a short boat ride from Kep and offers several small beaches, rustic bungalow accommodation, and the kind of unhurried island life that feels increasingly rare as Southeast Asia develops. The island has no motor vehicles, limited electricity, and a handful of family-run beach restaurants where fresh seafood is cooked on charcoal grills. It is not a destination for luxury or amenity but for simplicity and natural beauty.

Sihanoukville and the Islands

The coastal city of Sihanoukville, founded by the French in the 1950s as Cambodia's deep-water port and renamed after King Norodom Sihanouk, has had a turbulent recent history that makes it one of the most complicated destinations in Cambodia to write about. For most of the 2000s and early 2010s, Sihanoukville was a pleasant if somewhat ramshackle beach town with a backpacker scene, a few decent beaches, and access to the beautiful islands offshore. Between approximately 2016 and 2019, the city was transformed with startling speed by an influx of Chinese investment in casinos, which were legal for foreigners in Cambodia but banned in China. Hundreds of casinos and associated businesses opened, construction was everywhere, and the original character of the town was largely obliterated.

When China pressured Cambodia to ban online gambling in 2019, most of the Chinese investment departed almost overnight, leaving Sihanoukville in a state of unfinished construction and economic disruption from which it is still recovering. The city today presents a sometimes dispiriting panorama of half-finished buildings, abandoned casinos, and beaches that have been heavily developed but inconsistently maintained. For most travelers, Sihanoukville serves primarily as a transport hub for reaching the offshore islands rather than as a destination in itself.

Cambodia's Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Cambodia has three sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, each representing a distinct phase in the country's extraordinary archaeological and cultural history.

Sambor Prei Kuk: The Pre-Angkor City

The Temple Zone of Sambor Prei Kuk, inscribed in 2017, represents the second chapter in Cambodia's UNESCO story and recognizes the importance of the pre-Angkor civilization that developed the cultural and architectural traditions that would eventually produce Angkor. The inscription acknowledged Sambor Prei Kuk as an outstanding example of the urban and religious planning of the Khmer civilization in its formative period, and as a site that demonstrates the transition from pre-Angkor to Angkor architectural styles in real time, with temples from different periods showing the evolution of building techniques, decorative programs, and religious iconography.

The challenge for Sambor Prei Kuk as a UNESCO site is simultaneously to preserve its archaeological integrity, develop the infrastructure necessary for responsible visitor access, and ensure that the surrounding communities benefit from the cultural heritage on their doorstep. Current visitor numbers are low compared to Angkor, but the World Heritage inscription has accelerated development of access roads, visitor facilities, and interpretation materials.