Cambodia & Laos: Angkor to Luang Prabang, 8 Nights

Met at Phnom Penh airport by your driver and taken to the hotel, with check-in from mid-afternoon. The evening is for a gentle first look at the city along Sisowath Quay, the riverside promenade where families come out as the heat goes, facing the broad junction of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong. Dinner is at an Indian restaurant close by, and Jain and vegetarian dishes are always available.

A guided day in the capital. The Royal Palace is still the king’s residence; its throne hall and gardens are open, and the Silver Pagoda beside it has a floor of silver tiles and a small crystal Buddha much revered. The afternoon is Tuol Sleng, the high school the Khmer Rouge turned into the S-21 prison, now a genocide museum; it is sombre and important, and the guide will explain the history with care.

North along the main highway through farmland and villages of houses on stilts, with stops wherever you like: the snack stalls of Skun, or the long Angkorian stone bridge at Kampong Kdei, built in the twelfth century and still carrying traffic. Arrival in Siem Reap is in the afternoon. The old market and the riverside lanes are easy to walk in the evening before dinner.

Angkor Wat first, the vast temple-mountain of the twelfth century with its famous reliefs, then Ta Prohm, whose towers are split and bound by the roots of giant trees. After lunch, Angkor Thom: the South Gate with its rows of gods and demons, the Bayon’s serene stone faces, and the Terrace of the Elephants. In the evening an Apsara dance performance, the classical court dance of the Khmer kings, comes with dinner.

Out beyond the main park to Kbal Spean, where a forest trail of about forty minutes leads to a riverbed carved nearly a thousand years ago with rows of lingas and reclining Vishnus under the running water. On the way back, Banteay Srei is the most delicate of Angkor’s temples, small in scale and cut from rose-pink sandstone with carvings as fine as lace. The afternoon is free to rest at the hotel.

Transfer to Siem Reap airport for the flight north to Luang Prabang, a former royal capital on a peninsula between the Mekong and the Nam Khan, listed by UNESCO for its temples and its French-era houses. After check-in, the evening is spent at the night market, which fills the main street with textiles, paper lanterns and silverwork, followed by an Indian dinner.

Dawn is when the monks walk the streets to receive sticky rice, an alms round anyone can watch respectfully from across the road. After breakfast the guide leads you round Wat Xieng Thong, with its sweeping roofs of 1560 and its glass-mosaic walls, and the Royal Palace museum. In the afternoon the van heads south to the Kuang Si falls, a series of turquoise pools in the forest, with a rescue centre for moon bears by the entrance.

An early start upriver to the Pak Ou caves, two caverns in a cliff above the Mekong filled with thousands of small Buddha images left by pilgrims over centuries. After lunch, the station for an afternoon train on the Laos–China railway, which runs south through tunnels and karst hills to Vientiane in about two hours. Arrival is in the late afternoon, in time for a walk along the Mekong promenade and the riverside night market in the capital.

After breakfast, the Vientiane city tour before the flight: the golden stupa of Pha That Luang, the Patuxai arch, and the cloisters of Wat Si Saket lined with small Buddha images. Wattay airport is only about twenty minutes from the centre. The tour is timed around your flight, so with an early departure it is shortened to what the morning allows.