Our favourite Cambodia tours and excursions

It's easy to beeline from landmark to landmark, but the tours we really love dive into the life that goes on in between. 

That’s why, on this tour, you're as likely to find yourself glimpsing into local shops and businesses as hearing about the days of colonialism at the Royal Palace — and you’ll spend more time mingling with the locals at riverside parks or back-alley temples than admiring monuments. Phnom Penh’s authenticity and simple, unguarded friendliness make it one of the most rewarding places in Southeast Asia to tap into the rhythms of city life, and this tour is a brilliant way to start your trip.

It’s often bemoaned that Phnom Penh is no longer the “pearl” it was in the 1920s — but since when did beautiful equate to interesting anyway? 

Whether it’s 1950s buildings that blend traditional construction with modern materials or colonial-era buildings repurposed by the Khmer Rouge, the messy, unpredictable (and yes, sometimes ugly) architecture of modern Phnom Penh has some fascinating stories to tell. After lunch in the 19th-century headquarters of Messageries Fluviales de Cochinchine (a colonial shipping company), trishaw your way through the French Quarter to conclude with a cruise on the Mekong, where traditional pagodas jostle with contemporary architecture along the riverside.

Magnificent in both scale and artistry, half-supported and half-consumed by buttress-rooted silk-cotton trees, the temples of Angkor are among the most fantastic man-made sights on the planet.

The biggest mistake you can make is underestimating just how much there is to see — and since you’ll never cover it all, the secret is to mix it up. Check out the big hitters, but combine them with root-strangled Preah Khan, or Banteay Samré. These amazing ruins are on the Grand Circuit but they barely get a look-in, and the chances are you’ll have them almost to yourself.

Greater adjutants, rufous-winged buzzards, Indochinese bushlarks and white-winged ducks: a list of Kulen Promtep’s avian residents reads like a page out of Darwin’s logbook.

Covering an area of over 4,000 sq km of lowland forest and swampland, this wildlife sanctuary is the largest protected area in Cambodia and one of its most important birding sites. Over 150 species have been spotted here, including the extremely rare giant ibis, which is Cambodia’s national bird and thought to be extinct until the late 1990s. Stay at a community ecolodge and you’ll have endless opportunities to get out and spot them.

“You start with crickets and a beer.” That’s Angelina Jolie’s advice on Cambodian street food — but don’t worry, it’s not all about deep-fried tarantulas. 

Travel by tuk-tuk on a night-time tour of Phnom Penh and you’ll soon find out: Khmer cuisine all about rich, coconutty amoks, fish so fresh it’s almost flapping, pungent fermented sauces, fragrant cardamom and — of course — the spicy, eucalyptus zing of Kampot pepper. Accompanying your culinary introduction to the capital will be a range of freshly prepared exotic cocktails, and plenty of photo opportunities at some of the city’s most impressive landmarks lit up against the night sky.