Cambodia

Cambodia's rapidly changing capital where French colonial architecture meets modern riverside development. The Royal Palace, sobering Tuol Sleng museum, and legendary street food scene at Central Market make it a compelling stop between Angkor Wat and the southern beaches.

Gateway to the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex, Siem Reap is more than just temples. Pub Street nightlife, floating villages on Tonlé Sap lake, Cambodian cooking classes, and circus performances make it a destination in its own right.

Cambodia's second-largest city and quiet cultural capital, draped along the lazy Sangker River in the country's rice-bowl northwest. Battambang preserves more French colonial shophouses than anywhere else in Cambodia, with verandahed two-storey rows now housing boutique hotels, third-wave coffee bars, and the studios of Phare Ponleu Selpak, the circus and arts school founded in 1994 to support children orphaned by the Khmer Rouge era. Bamboo Train rides on improvised flat platforms, the cliff temples of Phnom Sampeau with their grim Killing Caves, and the brick stupas of Wat Banan and Wat Ek Phnom round out a destination most travellers regret skipping.

A drowsy riverside town on Cambodia's south coast where the Praek Tuek Chhu river curls past faded French shophouses and the Elephant Mountains rise abruptly inland. Kampot is the world capital of one specific thing: Kampot Pepper, a Protected Geographical Indication crop whose long-pepper, black, red, and white varieties end up on Michelin tables in Paris and Tokyo. Days are spent on plantation tours, kayaking the river, riding up to the abandoned French hill station and casino at Bokor National Park, or taking the 30-minute hop east to Kep for crab market lunches. The slowest, friendliest base in Cambodia.