Phnom Penh & Siem Reap, 5 Nights

Your driver-guide meets you outside the baggage hall and the van takes you into the city; check-in is from about three. In the late afternoon a boat goes out where the Tonle Sap river meets the Mekong, passing the riverfront promenade, the palace roofs and the floating homes of fishing families as the sun goes down. Dinner is at an Indian restaurant, with Jain and vegetarian dishes available.

The Royal Palace, home of Cambodia’s king, is a compound of gold-tipped roofs laid out in 1866; inside, the Silver Pagoda is floored with silver tiles and houses an emerald-green Buddha. The Independence Monument, a lotus-shaped tower of 1958, stands on the way to Wat Phnom, the hilltop shrine from which the city takes its name. The afternoon goes to Tuol Sleng, the school turned Khmer Rouge prison, which is harrowing and essential. The evening is free.

A full morning on the road north through rice fields, sugar palms and stilt villages. The van can stop at Skun, famous for its market stalls of fried spiders, and at Kampong Kdei to walk across a stone bridge from the Angkor era, still in use after eight centuries. Siem Reap is reached in the afternoon. After check-in there is time to find your feet around the old market and Pub Street before an Indian dinner.

A full day in the Angkor park. Angkor Wat comes first, a temple-mountain built by Suryavarman II for Vishnu, with its bas-reliefs of the churning of the ocean of milk running along the galleries. Ta Prohm, left to the forest, is held together by tree roots. After lunch the South Gate leads into Angkor Thom, the walled royal city, with the smiling stone faces of the Bayon, the Baphuon and the Elephant Terrace, and then a hilltop or temple to watch the sunset. Dinner is Indian.

North-east into the countryside, to Kbal Spean first, while it is cool. A forest path climbs gently for about forty minutes to a stream whose bed and banks were carved in the eleventh century with lingas and images of Vishnu. Banteay Srei, on the way back, is small and exquisite, a tenth-century temple to Shiva in pink sandstone carved so finely it looks like wood. Lunch is included today, and dinner is at an Indian restaurant.

Breakfast at the hotel and time for a last walk before checkout. Siem Reap’s newer international airport lies well outside town, so the drive takes around an hour; the driver-guide sets the pickup time from your flight.