Three days in Phnom Penh: a river capital emptied at gunpoint, and back on its feet

Two nights on the riverfront, with the palace and the museum on one day and the Khmer Rouge sites on another.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Phnom Penh
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Phnom Penh sits where the Mekong meets the Tonle Sap, which is a good place to build a city and the reason there has been one here since the fourteenth century. The French made it their Cambodian capital in the 1860s and laid out boulevards and a quay; by the 1960s it had a reputation as one of the loveliest cities in Asia.

On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge walked in and ordered everybody out. Within three days a city of two million people held almost nobody. A school in the suburbs and an orchard south of the city are what happened next. Neither is optional if you want to understand Cambodia, both are hard, and they belong on a day of their own.

What is here now is a fast, loud, young capital with a good river front, a genuinely great museum, and the best French bread in Southeast Asia. Two nights is enough for the essentials and does not leave you sitting in the heat with nothing to do.

Highlights

  • The Silver Pagoda, floored with five thousand solid silver tiles you mostly walk on carpet over
  • The National Museum's Angkor sculpture, in an open-sided terracotta pavilion from 1920
  • The prison and the orchard, done in one day with the audio guides, which are exceptional
  • The 1937 Art Deco market under a yellow dome, still selling fish and gold
  • A boat at six on the Tonle Sap, when the sun goes down behind the palace

Where to stay

Phnom Penh, two nights

Stay near the riverfront between Wat Phnom and the palace. It is the walkable part of the city, the boats leave from it, and the tuk-tuk fare to everywhere else is a dollar or two.

The Bassac and Tonle Bassac districts south of the palace have the better restaurants and rooftop bars and are ten minutes away. The Russian Market area is cheaper and further out and works if you plan on shopping.

Day by day

Day 1 in Phnom Penh

The palace, the Angkor sculpture, and the river at six

The Royal Palace has been the king's residence since the 1860s and still is, which is why a third of it is closed and why the dress code is taken seriously. The building worth the ticket is the Silver Pagoda in the compound next door, whose floor is five thousand tiles of solid silver, mostly under carpet, and which holds a life-size gold Buddha set with several thousand diamonds.

Next door, the National Museum has the best collection of Khmer sculpture anywhere, including pieces from Angkor that are safer here than they were in the forest. It is open-sided around a courtyard, so it stays bearable in the afternoon.

Then walk the quay. The Tonle Sap runs into the Mekong in front of you and the evening boats leave from the jetty at about five.

  1. 14:00

    The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda

    Historic

    Open 08:00 to 11:00 and 14:00 to 17:00, and it closes at short notice for state occasions. Shoulders and knees covered or you will be sent to buy a shirt at the gate. Ninety minutes covers the throne hall, the pagoda and the murals in the cloister.

  2. 16:00

    The National Museum of Cambodia

    Culture

    A terracotta pavilion from 1920 around a courtyard of frangipani and lily ponds. The pre-Angkorian sculpture in the first gallery is the part people are surprised by. An hour and a half, and it closes at five.

  3. 18:00

    Sisowath Quay

    Other

    The riverfront promenade, two kilometres of it, busiest at dusk when the whole city comes out to walk. Boat operators tout along it for the sunset cruise; the standard price is five dollars a head.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner off the quay

    Eat

    One street back from the river is better value than on it. Fish amok, a plate of morning glory with garlic, and Angkor beer at fifty cents a glass during happy hour.

With more time: Wat Ounalom, on the quay beside the museum, is one of the five monasteries the city was founded around and dates to 1422. The Foreign Correspondents' Club upstairs on the corner is the standard first drink in Phnom Penh.

Day 2 in Phnom Penh

S-21 and Choeung Ek

Tuol Sleng was a secondary school until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge turned it into their central interrogation prison. Between then and 1979 something over fourteen thousand people were held here and a dozen came out alive. The classrooms still have their blackboards and their floor tiles, and the barbed wire the guards strung along the balconies to stop prisoners jumping is still there.

Fifteen kilometres south is the orchard where the prisoners were taken. There are 129 mass graves at Choeung Ek, and the memorial stupa in the middle holds the skulls of the people exhumed from them. The audio guide walks you round in about ninety minutes and is one of the best pieces of museum interpretation anywhere; the pause where a survivor describes the music played to cover the noise is the part you will remember.

Come back into town in the late afternoon and go to the hill the city is named after. It is a small, cheerful, chaotic pagoda full of fortune tellers and incense sellers, and after the morning you will want it.

  1. 08:00

    Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21 Prison)

    Culture

    Open from eight. Take the audio guide, allow two hours, and start in Building A on the ground floor. Two of the surviving prisoners often sit at tables by the exit with their books.

  2. 11:30

    The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

    Other

    Half an hour south by tuk-tuk; agree a return fare and have the driver wait. The audio guide is included and takes ninety minutes on the full route. Do not skip the last section, which is about the trials.

  3. 15:30

    Late lunch back in town

    Eat

    Eat somewhere quiet with air conditioning and take your time over it. A bowl of kuy teav and an iced coffee with condensed milk.

  4. 17:00

    Wat Phnom

    Other

    The 27 metre hill the city grew around, with a pagoda on top and a legend about a widow who found four Buddha images floating in the river in 1372. Busy with people praying for luck, and the elephant that used to work the path has retired.

With more time: If you need something lighter to end on, the Sosoro money museum near the hill covers two thousand years of Cambodian currency, including the period when the Khmer Rouge abolished money altogether and blew up the national bank.

Day 3 in Phnom Penh

The Art Deco market, then out

Phsar Thmei opened in 1937 with what was then the largest dome in Asia, a yellow ochre cross of four arms with the trading floor under the middle. It survived the war, the evacuation and sixty years of neglect and was restored in 2011, and it is still a working market rather than a souvenir hall: gold at the centre, fish and flowers at the edges, watch repairers and hairdressers in between.

Buy Kampot pepper, a krama scarf and a bag of dried mango, eat one more baguette, and go. The airport is half an hour west.

  1. 08:00

    Central Market

    Other

    Open from about seven. The food stalls on the north side do breakfast noodles and iced coffee for a dollar or two, and the outer arms are where the prices stop being tourist prices.

  2. 10:30

    Num pang for the road

    Eat

    Pate, pickled carrot, cucumber, chilli and a squeeze of soy in a baguette, from a cart, for a dollar and a half. The best cheap sandwich in Asia.

  3. 11:30

    To the airport

    Travel

    Thirty to forty minutes by taxi depending on traffic, or the airport shuttle train from the central station, which is slower but immune to it.

With more time: With a later flight, the Russian Market south of the centre is where locals actually shop and where the counterfeit clothing comes from, and Wat Langka runs free meditation sessions on Monday and Thursday evenings that anybody can join.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Phnom Penh International is ten kilometres west of the centre, about 30 minutes and 12 US dollars in a taxi, and there is now an airport rail link to the central station. Buses from Siem Reap take six hours, from Ho Chi Minh City about seven including the border.

In town, use the PassApp or Grab apps for tuk-tuks; a ride across the centre is one or two dollars and it removes the haggling. The riverfront and the palace are walkable from each other but almost nothing else is, because of the traffic and the heat.

The Khmer Rouge sites

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek belong together and take one day. Do the prison first and the killing field second, in that order, because that is the order the prisoners went in. Both audio guides are included in the ticket and both are outstanding, narrated in part by survivors; wear the headphones and take the full route rather than reading the boards.

Neither place is suitable for young children. Photography of the exhibits is allowed and photography of yourself in front of them is not, which needs saying more often than it should.

Money, dress and safety

The US dollar is the working currency and riel is used as small change at four thousand to the dollar. Bring notes in good condition. Card acceptance is widespread in hotels and restaurants and non-existent at markets.

Cover shoulders and knees for the Royal Palace, which turns people away at the gate, and for the pagodas. Bag snatching from passing motorbikes is the one common crime against visitors: keep bags on the pavement side and do not use a phone at the roadside.

Eating

Start with kuy teav, the pork and rice noodle soup Cambodians eat for breakfast, and num pang, a baguette split and filled with pate, pickled vegetables and chilli, which is the best thing the French left behind. Fish amok and lok lak are the two dishes every restaurant does.

Kampot pepper is the country's one great export, green on the vine or dried black, and a bag of it costs a few dollars in the market. The riverfront restaurants are convenient and average; the better cooking is a few streets back around Bassac Lane and the Russian Market.

Phnom Penh asks more of a visitor than most capitals. It gives you a gold Buddha with nine thousand diamonds in the morning and a room full of photographs of the dead in the afternoon, and both belong to the same country and the same century.

Two nights, in the right order, with a good dinner in between.

Or make it a longer trip

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Common questions

How many days do you need in Phnom Penh?
Two nights. One day for the palace, museum and river, one for Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, and a morning for the market. A third night is worth it only if you want to shop, eat properly, or take a day trip out to the Mekong islands.
Should I visit Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields?
Yes, if you can. They are the reason modern Cambodia looks the way it does, and the country has chosen to keep them open and explain them rather than close them. Do both in one day, in that order, and use the audio guides. Then plan nothing demanding for the rest of the day.
Is Phnom Penh safe?
Broadly yes, with one caveat: bag and phone snatching from moving motorbikes is common and occasionally injures people who hold on. Keep valuables out of sight at the roadside, use a booked tuk-tuk rather than a street one at night, and you will be fine.
How do I get to Siem Reap from here?
A one hour flight, or six hours on a bus with the sleeper and VIP services leaving morning and night, or a slower and more scenic route through Battambang. The bus is comfortable and cheap and the road is now good.
What is the best time to visit?
November to February, when it is dry and around 30 degrees. March to May is very hot. The wet season from June to October brings a heavy afternoon downpour and green countryside, and the water festival in November, when the Tonle Sap reverses its flow, fills the riverfront with boat races and a million spectators.