Cambodia travel guide: from Angkor to the southern islands, for a first trip

Along the Sangker river, colonial facades with closed shutters line up beneath the tamarind trees, and nobody tries to sell you anything.

The country's second city, Battambang has kept the finest ensemble of French colonial architecture in Cambodia, with a compact centre of early 20th-century shophouses. It is also the birthplace of Phare Ponleu Selpak, the circus and arts school whose troupe has made a name for itself as far as Siem Reap.

One day is enough to stroll through the centre, climb to Phnom Sampov temple in the late afternoon for the bats' evening exodus, and ride the bamboo train at O Dambong. In the evening, the Phare circus show is well worth the night out.

It is the stop that tours skip, and that is exactly why you should go: you see a provincial Cambodia, paced by the market and the river, four hours by bus from Siem Reap.

At 6pm the Praek Tuek Chhu turns to silver and the wooden boats drift slowly off towards the Bokor hills, engines idling.

A small colonial town on the Praek Tuek Chhu river, Kampot owes its fame to the pepper that carries its name, protected by a geographical indication since 2010. It is also the gateway to Bokor National Park, whose abandoned hill station looks down over the coast.

Three days pass easily here: a sunset cruise booked on the quay, kayaking in the mangrove-lined river channels, a free tour of a pepper plantation such as La Plantation or Sothy's, and a day in Kep for the crab market.

Kampot is the ideal base for the south coast: quieter than Sihanoukville, whose casino building sites have muddied its image, and small enough to do everything by bicycle or tuk-tuk.

At 5am the five towers stand out black against a sky turning from violet to orange, and their reflection slowly forms in the left-hand pool.

Built in the 12th century by Suryavarman II in honour of Vishnu, Angkor Wat is the largest religious complex in the world and the heart of the site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992. Buddhist since later centuries, it was never abandoned and now features on the national flag.

The visit starts on the causeway across the moat, then follows the first-level galleries and their bas-reliefs, including the famous Churning of the Sea of Milk, before climbing to the central sanctuary. Allow three hours at the very least, more if you stay on after sunrise.

It is the temple to start with: the others make more sense once you have grasped the scale and layout of this one.

Wherever you turn in the upper galleries, a stone face is looking at you, lips smiling and eyelids half closed.

The Bayon sits at the exact centre of Angkor Thom, the fortified capital built by Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century. Its towers carry 216 carved faces, attributed either to the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or to the king himself. It is the great Buddhist temple of Angkor, where Angkor Wat was Hindu.

You enter through the south gate of Angkor Thom, guarded by a row of giants pulling a naga serpent, then walk the lively bas-reliefs of the lower level, which tell of naval battles and market scenes. An hour and a half is enough, two if you push on to the Baphuon and the Terrace of the Elephants close by.

No other Khmer temple gives you this feeling of being watched: after Angkor Wat, it is the most photogenic visit, and the most intimate.

The roots of a silk-cotton tree pour down from a gallery roof like a frozen flow, and all you hear is birdsong: the jungle has taken the temple back.

Ta Prohm is a Buddhist monastery founded by Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century. Archaeologists chose to leave it deliberately little restored, trees included, to show the state of the temples when they were rediscovered. The filming of Tomb Raider in 2001 made it famous far beyond archaeology enthusiasts.

You wander for about an hour between collapsed courtyards, dark corridors and a dozen monumental trees, the most photographed of which stands in an inner courtyard. Wooden walkways now guide visitors through the most fragile parts.

Preah Khan, nearby, offers a similar atmosphere with fewer people, but Ta Prohm remains the temple where the dialogue between stone and vegetation is most spectacular.

The pink sandstone catches fire at the end of the day, and every lintel reads like a page of lace.

Built in the 10th century, Banteay Srei is one of the smallest temples at Angkor and the most finely carved: pediments and lintels tell episodes from the Ramayana in a depth of relief found nowhere else on the site. It lies about 25 km north-east of the main group.

Walking round the sanctuary takes barely 45 minutes, but you will happily spend an hour taking in the details. A small interpretation centre at the entrance explains the construction and restoration.

After the temple-mountains of Angkor Wat and the Bayon, it is the perfect counterpoint: the scale is human and your eye goes to the sculpture rather than the architecture.

The boat slides between houses perched on wooden stilts, and children paddle home from school in dugout canoes.

The Tonlé Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia, listed as a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Its level rises and falls by several metres over the year, swollen by the Mekong during the monsoon, which explains the 6 to 8 metre stilts of Kampong Phluk village.

The trip from Siem Reap takes half a day: a tuk-tuk ride, then a motorboat through the village, with an optional stop for a canoe ride into the flooded forest. Expect about USD 20 per person for the boat, plus the entrance fee.

Choose Kampong Phluk over Chong Khneas, the village nearest Siem Reap, where visits have become very commercial and the pestering of visitors tiresome.

The gilded roofs catch the sun above saffron-yellow walls, and inside the Silver Pagoda the floor shines under your bare feet.

Home to Cambodia's monarchs since 1866, the Royal Palace overlooks the Phnom Penh riverfront facing the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonlé Sap. Within its walls, the Silver Pagoda takes its name from a floor paved with more than 5,000 silver tiles; it houses a small crystal Buddha and a life-size gold Buddha.

Only part of the grounds is open: the Throne Hall, seen from outside, the pavilion given by Napoleon III and the pagoda with its Ramayana frescoes. Allow an hour and a half, two if you continue to the National Museum next door.

It is one of the few royal palaces in Asia still lived in that you can visit, and the right place to understand the monarchy's role in today's Cambodia.

The classrooms of this former high school have kept their tiled floors and blackboards; the brick cells partitioning them tell you what they became.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime turned Tuol Svay Prey high school into a detention and interrogation centre, S-21. Thousands of prisoners were photographed, tortured and then executed here, most of them at Choeung Ek. The site became a memorial museum after the regime fell.

The visit follows the buildings in order: cells, interrogation rooms, then the galleries of prisoner portraits, taken on arrival by the regime itself. The audio guide, available in English and French, is built from survivors' testimonies; allow two hours, more if you listen to it in full.

It is not a pleasant visit, but it is a necessary one to understand today's Cambodia, where almost every family lost someone during those four years.

A glass stupa rises in the middle of a former orchard; behind its panes, the skulls exhumed from the pits are arranged in tiers.

Choeung Ek, about 15 km south of Phnom Penh, was the main execution site for S-21 prisoners under the Khmer Rouge regime. The mass graves were exhumed after 1979, and a memorial stupa now holds the remains of the victims identified on site.

You walk the route alone, with the audio guide included in the ticket, through some fifteen stations around the pits and up to the stupa. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours, in a silence visitors keep of their own accord.

The site completes Tuol Sleng: one shows the machine, the other its outcome. Visit both on the same day, in that order.

The boat slows in front of a long curve of white sand, and the water under the hull becomes clear enough to count the fish.

Koh Rong Sanloem is the quiet little sister of Koh Rong, in the Gulf of Thailand. No roads, no town: a handful of beaches linked by footpaths, including Saracen Bay to the east, the best equipped, and Lazy Beach to the west, facing the sunset.

You stay two or three nights to swim, cross the island on foot in under an hour along a jungle trail, snorkel off the rocks and dine with your feet in the sand. At night, bioluminescent plankton lights up the water of Saracen Bay.

Koh Rong, the big neighbouring island, draws the party crowd; Koh Rong Sanloem suits a first trip as a couple or a family better, and the electricity cut for part of the night is part of the charm.

On the market stalls, blue crabs scramble in their baskets and the scent of fresh green pepper rises from the grills.

A former seaside resort founded by the French and favoured by the Cambodian elite until the 1960s, Kep keeps the shells of its modernist villas, abandoned and then looted during the war. The crab market, on the seafront, is its heart today.

A day trip from Kampot is enough: lunch on green-pepper crab in one of the restaurants on stilts, then a walk in the small Kep National Park, whose loop trail offers views over the gulf and the island of Koh Tonsay.

Kep has neither the beach of Koh Rong Sanloem nor the buzz of Kampot; you come precisely for that languor, and for one of the best seafood meals in the country.