Pub Street, Siem Reap: A Guide for People Who Would Rather Not (2026)

Pub Street is about 100 meters of Street 8 with neon on both sides, and the question of whether it is worth it is the wrong question. Everyone walks through it, because the Old Market sits at one end, the restaurants of the center surround it and every tuk-tuk driver in town uses it as the default drop-off. The right questions are when to be there, how long to stay and which of the four alleys to leave by. Before 8:00 p.m. it is a place to eat and watch a free dance show. After 11:00 p.m. it is a spectacle worth twenty minutes. Trying to do both in one evening is how people end up disliking Siem Reap.

Most of what ranks for this question is either a list of “the best bars on Pub Street” built from aggregator ratings or a backpacker memoir from a decade ago. Both fail the same way: the street’s most famous bar is open according to one set of sources and closed according to another, its best-known cocktail bar moved across the river, and the “Temple” the lists describe is in fact five venues under one name. Nobody says what the street is like at 6:00 p.m. versus 1:00 a.m., which is the only thing that decides whether you enjoy it.

Prices, hours and transport times below were checked against venue websites, local listings and official sources in October 2026.

The Question Is When, Not Whether

Pub Street runs on two shifts that have almost nothing in common. The first shift, from the 5:00 p.m. opening to about 9:30 p.m., is a restaurant street with music in the background: families at the Khmer Family Restaurant, couples at The Red Piano, tour groups at the Temple venues watching the dancers. The second shift, from about 10:00 p.m. until the last bar locks up between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., is a drinking street with buckets, bass and a crowd that is mostly under 30 and mostly on its first night in Cambodia.

The honest verdict: the first shift is worth it for one dinner and the free show, if you pick the restaurant with care. The second shift is worth it for the length of time it takes to walk from one end to the other, which is about four minutes at midnight pace. Neither shift is worth staying for if you have a 4:30 a.m. alarm for the Angkor Wat sunrise, and in Siem Reap most people do.

The deeper point is that Pub Street is the center of the map, not the center of the nightlife. The better bars of the town, covered in the guide to the best bars in Siem Reap away from the noise, are all within ten minutes on foot. Street 8 is where you start, not where you stay.

What Pub Street Actually Is

Street 8 runs east to west for roughly 100 meters, from The Red Piano on the corner of Street 11 to the Banana Leaf restaurant at the Old Market end. Street 7, universally called The Lane, runs parallel one block north. The Passage, a pedestrian alley, runs parallel one block south. Street 11 closes the western end and Sivatha Boulevard, the main north-south road of the town, is one block further west. The Old Market, Psar Chas, sits at the eastern end with the river just beyond it. That is the whole district: four short streets and a market, which is why it fills so quickly and why the sound has nowhere to go.

The history is shorter than the legend. Angkor What? opened in 1998 as the first bar on the street, when the road was unpaved and the area around the Old Market was still mostly guesthouses and motorbike repair. The Red Piano followed in 2000, and Angelina Jolie’s visits during the filming of Tomb Raider in 2001 gave it the story it still trades on. Temple Club and Le Tigre de Papier came soon after. The road was paved around 2005, and the name Pub Street came into common use around 2008. The pandemic emptied it for two years and the town used the pause to rebuild the road surface and the drains, which is why it now floods less in the rainy season than the streets around it.

Two things are true at once about the result. It is, by any measure, the most touristic hundred meters in Cambodia, and the Cambodians working on it are serving a crowd that will be gone in two days. It is also, after dark, pedestrian, lit and alive in a way almost nothing else in Siem Reap is, which is why residents bring visiting relatives to look at it even if they drink elsewhere. The guide to Pub Street and the Old Market as a neighborhood covers the daytime version, the market and whether to sleep nearby. This guide is about the night.

Pub Street Hour by Hour

Before 5:00 p.m.

The street is open to motorbikes, half the shutters are down and the restaurants that serve lunch do so to a trickle. Fish-spa tanks and massage chairs are set out on the pavement by late afternoon. If you want to see the architecture of the street, which is a mix of French-era shophouses and concrete infill, this is the only time you can. There is no reason to drink here before dark. The happy-hour boards go up around 4:00 p.m.

5:00 to 8:00 p.m.: the eating window

Bars post 5:00 p.m. as the official opening and the barriers go across the ends of the street to stop traffic. Happy hours run from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at most places, which is when the $0.50 and $0.75 draft beer boards are honest and the two-for-one cocktail offers apply. Restaurants fill from 6:30 p.m. and the tables on the street itself are taken by 7:00 p.m. in December and January.

This is the window to eat on Pub Street if you are going to eat on Pub Street at all. The free Apsara dance performance at the Temple venues starts at 7:30 p.m. and runs until about 9:30 p.m., and a table upstairs with a $5 to $8 main course is the cheapest seated dance performance in town. The dancing is a professional troupe doing a short classical and folk repertoire for diners, not a theater production: the guide to Apsara dance shows in Siem Reap explains the difference and what the formal venues charge. Which Pub Street kitchens are worth the money, and which three to seek out, is the subject of whether Pub Street is worth eating on.

8:00 to 11:00 p.m.: the handover

The dinner crowd thins from 9:00 p.m. and the sound systems go up. By 10:00 p.m. the street is full, shoulder to shoulder in high season, and the bars with upper floors and balconies have the best of it: you can watch without being in it. This is also the hour the children selling bracelets and postcards are most active, and the hour when the tuk-tuk drivers at both ends start the “where you go later” conversation. If you came for a look, this is the time to take it, and then walk out along The Lane.

11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.: the spectacle

The second shift proper. The music is loud enough that conversation moves to the side streets, the buckets come out and the crowd dances in the roadway. Temple Club is the traditional last stop of the night and the one venue the local listings still describe that way in 2026. If you have never seen a Southeast Asian party street, twenty minutes here is a genuine sight, in the same way a night market or a bus station is a sight. If you have, there is nothing new. Nobody in town will think less of you for leaving at 11:30 p.m., and the tuk-tuk home costs $2 to $3.

After 2:00 a.m.

Weeknights, most bars are closing. Friday and Saturday, a few run until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. The street empties fast once the music stops and the people left on it are drunk, which is when bag snatching and bad decisions happen. Book a ride on PassApp or Grab from inside a bar rather than negotiating with the drivers waiting at the Street 11 end. The sunrise tuk-tuks leave the hotels at 4:45 a.m.

Dry season, rainy season

From November to March the street is at full strength every night and the restaurants’ outdoor tables are gone by 7:00 p.m. From May to October the rain usually arrives in the late afternoon or early evening and clears within an hour or two, the bars are half full after 11:00 p.m. and the happy hours stretch later. The rebuilt drains mean Street 8 itself drains quickly, but Street 11 and the Old Market side still pool after a heavy storm. Sandals, not shoes, between May and October.

The Bars and Restaurants Still Standing on Street 8

Siem Reap opens and closes venues faster than any guide can track, and Pub Street is the fastest-moving block in it. The entries below are limited to venues confirmed as operating in 2025 or 2026 by their own websites or by locally maintained listings updated in those years. Several bars that appear in older guides have been left out for that reason, not because they were bad.

The Red Piano

The verdict: the one Pub Street address that works as a restaurant rather than a bar, and the right place for a first-night dinner if you want to be on the street without being inside the noise. It stands at the Street 11 corner at the western end, in a two-story shophouse with a balcony over the junction, and opens from 10:00 a.m. to about 12:30 a.m. The menu is European with some Khmer dishes, main courses in the $6 to $12 range, draft beer around $1 and a “Tomb Raider” cocktail that exists because Angelina Jolie drank here during filming in 2001. The limitation: prices run above the street average, the food is competent rather than memorable, and the Jolie story is doing more work than the kitchen.

Temple Club and the Temple family

The verdict: the free 7:30 p.m. dance performance is the best reason to be on Pub Street before 10:00 p.m., and the club downstairs is the reason most people are still there at 2:00 a.m. The confusion in every other guide comes from the name. “Temple” is a group of venues under one brand. On Pub Street itself, Temple Club and Temple Bar occupy a tall building mid-street with a dance floor at ground level, a dining floor with the stage, called Temple Balcony, above it, and a rooftop terrace for a quieter drink. Temple Sky Lounge Riverside is a separate rooftop on Achar Sva Street by the river, open until 2:00 a.m. most nights, with live music from about 7:30 p.m. Temple Design Bar is on Sok San Road and is more restaurant than bar, with stone-baked pizza and pasta. The Apsara performance at Temple Balcony is listed daily from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., free for diners who order food and drink. The limitation: the kitchen on Pub Street has slipped and recent visitors say so, the ground-floor club is as loud as anything on the street, and dinner during the show means watching dancers over the heads of a tour group.

Angkor What?

The verdict: check before you go, because the sources disagree on whether the most famous bar on the street is still trading. Angkor What? opened in 1998 as the first bar on Street 8 and spent two decades as the backpacker landmark of Cambodia, with graffiti-covered walls, buckets and a reputation as the last bar to close. It shut during the pandemic and was burgled while closed. It later reopened, and visitor reviews describe it trading through 2024 and in January 2025. A locally maintained Siem Reap guide updated in October 2026 still describes it as “now closed,” and no source dated 2026 confirms either way. The limitation, if it is open: it was always the cheapest, loudest and least Cambodian thing on the street, which was the point.

Banana Leaf

The verdict: a serviceable Khmer and Western restaurant at the Old Market end with live bands and sports on screens, better as a place to sit with a beer and watch the street than as a destination for food. It marks the eastern end of Pub Street. The limitation: the menu is long and generic, and the live music is cover songs at bar volume.

Khmer Family Restaurant

The verdict: the locally owned Khmer kitchen on the street, with a picture menu, amok and lok lak in the $4 to $7 range and tables that fill with families before 7:00 p.m. It is the Pub Street restaurant to choose if you want Cambodian food without walking to Wat Bo. The limitation: it is cooking for a tourist palate, so ask for the chili on the side rather than expecting heat, and compare it with the kitchens in the guide to Khmer dishes to try in Siem Reap before deciding it represents the cuisine.

Khmer Gelato

The verdict: the best thing to buy on Pub Street after 9:00 p.m. is ice cream. Khmer Gelato serves flavors built on Cambodian ingredients, palm sugar, Kampot pepper and tropical fruit among them, under the direction of Chef Kimsan, one half of the Kimsan twins behind the Embassy restaurant. A scoop costs a few dollars. The limitation: it is a counter, not a place to sit, and the queue at 10:00 p.m. in December is long.

What It Costs on the Street

The $0.50 draft beer is real and it is a door price. The glass is small, often a 250 ml pour of Angkor or Cambodia draft, and it is advertised to get you to a table where the second round, the cocktails and the food are priced at normal Siem Reap rates. A bottle of beer costs $1.50 to $2.50. A cocktail on the street runs $3 to $5, with two-for-one offers before 7:00 p.m. that make the real price $1.50 to $2.50 a glass. A bucket, which is a shared pail of spirit and mixer with straws, costs $6 to $10 and is the single most efficient way to lose an evening and a phone. Main courses are $3 to $8 at the Khmer places, $6 to $12 at The Red Piano. A fish spa is $1 to $2 for 15 minutes and a street-side foot massage $2 to $5. Change under $1 comes in riel at roughly 4,000 to the dollar, and torn or written-on dollar bills are refused everywhere in town, including by the bars that handed them to you. The guide to dollars and riel in Cambodia explains the rules in detail.

The Scams, and the One That Is a Law

Pub Street is not dangerous, but it is where the small, repetitive tricks of Siem Reap are concentrated, because it is where the newest visitors are. Most of them cost a few dollars. One of them can cost a prison sentence. The full catalog is in the guide to Siem Reap scams to avoid. These are the Pub Street versions.

The tuk-tuk at the end of the street

The drivers waiting at the Street 11 and Old Market ends quote $5 for a ride that costs $2 to $3 on a meter, and the “where you go tomorrow” conversation is a pitch for a $20 temple day that may turn into a tour of silk shops and a cousin’s restaurant. Neither is a scam exactly, both are a markup. The fix is the PassApp or Grab app, which gives a fixed fare before you get in and a record of the driver. The guide to getting around Siem Reap covers fares by distance. A specific warning from the UK Foreign Office applies here: lone women in the Pub Street area have been assaulted by men posing as motorbike taxi drivers. A ride booked through an app is a ride with a name on it.

Children selling bracelets, postcards and milk

The children who work the street from about 8:00 p.m. are selling bracelets at $1, postcards in packs of ten and, in the older routine, asking for a tin of baby formula from a nearby shop, which is sold back to the shop once you have walked away. Some are working for adults. The organization ChildSafe, run by the Cambodian NGO Friends International, puts the rule in one sentence: “Do not buy goods or use services offered by children.” Buying keeps them out of school and on the street until 1:00 a.m. The guide to orphanage tourism in Cambodia explains why the same logic applies to the orphanage visits that tuk-tuk drivers offer, and the guide to social enterprises in Siem Reap lists the restaurants and shops where money reaches children through their parents’ wages instead.

“Happy” pizza and the law

Restaurants on and around Pub Street advertise “happy” or “special” pizza, which means pizza with cannabis cooked into it, and sell it in plain sight with a wink about how happy you want to be. The law is not ambiguous. Cannabis is illegal in Cambodia in every form, including in food. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office describes Cambodia’s drug policy as zero tolerance, states that possessing drugs “even in very small quantities” can carry severe penalties including long prison terms, and warns that police raid venues popular with foreigners and require urine or blood tests, with a positive result meaning arrest. There is no prisoner transfer agreement with the UK, and there is none with the United States or Australia either, so a sentence is served in Cambodia. Enforcement against the pizza restaurants is uneven, which is why they exist, but it is not absent: in March 2013 police raided a happy pizza restaurant and a guesthouse in Siem Reap, arrested 21 people, 17 of them foreigners, and charged the owners with drug distribution. The practical rule is simpler than the legal one. Nothing on a Pub Street menu is worth a conversation with the Siem Reap Provincial Court.

Fake bills and the wrong change

The FCDO notes that counterfeit dollar bills are given as change in shops and clubs. On Pub Street the more common version is simpler: change counted in riel for a dollar bill at a 3,500 rate instead of 4,000, or a $10 bill taken for a $20. Count the change at the bar, not on the street.

Drink spiking and methanol

Cambodian police have reported drink spiking in bars frequented by foreigners. The bucket culture of the second shift makes it easy: a shared pail with six straws has no owner. Buy drinks you watched being made and finish them. Separately, alcohol containing methanol has killed and injured people in Cambodia, and methanol cannot be tasted or smelled. The risk is in cheap spirits poured from unlabeled bottles, which is what goes into a $6 bucket. Beer and sealed bottles are the way to drink cheaply and safely on the street.

Safety, Honestly

Pub Street is a lit, pedestrian, crowded street with police at the Old Market end most nights, and violent crime against visitors is rare. The dangers are on its edges. Bag and phone snatching from passing motorbikes happens on Street 11, Sivatha Boulevard and the river road, where traffic resumes, and the technique is a pillion passenger grabbing a shoulder bag or a phone held out for a photo. Carry the bag on the side away from the road and put the phone away before you step off the pedestrian block. Walking home across the Old Market bridge to Wat Bo at midnight is normal and people do it every night. Walking alone along the unlit stretches of the river road north of the bridge after 1:00 a.m. is less sensible. The broader picture, including the hospital and pharmacy you would need at 2:00 a.m., is in is Siem Reap safe.

The Noise, Measured From the Hotels

The question nobody answers in a hotel listing: can you hear Pub Street from the room? The rule is that sound carries along the four streets of the district and stops at the river and at Sivatha Boulevard. Hotels and hostels on Street 8, The Lane, The Passage and Street 11 hear competing sound systems until 2:00 a.m. on weeknights and 4:00 a.m. on weekends, through closed windows, with the bass as the part that gets through. Hotels on Sok San Road near the Sivatha end hear it faintly and hear motorbike traffic instead. Hotels across the river in Wat Bo, five to ten minutes’ walk, hear nothing from Pub Street but may hear the Hard Rock Cafe on live music nights if they are on the river road near the Old Market bridge. Hotels along Sivatha Boulevard hear traffic all night, which some people find worse. The honest verdict: sleeping within two blocks of Pub Street makes sense only for people who intend to be on it until it closes. The alternatives by neighborhood are compared in where to stay in Siem Reap and, for this precise trade-off, in the guide to the best area to stay in Siem Reap.

Four Ways Out

Pub Street is a corridor with four exits and each leads somewhere better. The distances below are on foot from the middle of Street 8.

North into The Lane: Asana Old Wooden House

The verdict: the best bar within one minute of Pub Street, and the proof that leaving the street does not mean leaving the district. Asana occupies a traditional wooden Khmer house on Street 7, the alley called The Lane, that runs parallel to Pub Street one block north. It has served cocktails built on Khmer herbs, rice spirit and infusions since 2012, with a Ginger Mojito and a drink called Little Sweet as the house signatures, and opens daily from 4:00 p.m. to midnight. The 90-minute Herbal Cocktail Class runs every day at 6:00 p.m. in English or Khmer, includes three cocktails and shots, and costs $20, or $18 per person booked through the bar’s own site. The limitation: the house is small and the class fills in high season, and the cocktails are sweeter than a European palate expects, so ask for less syrup.

The Lane as a whole is quieter than Street 8 by a wide margin, with a run of small restaurants and bars under the shophouse arcades. It is the natural route west to Street 11 and on to Sivatha. One caution for anyone using an old guide: Miss Wong, which made The Lane famous, is no longer here.

South through The Passage to Street 9 and Alley West

The Passage is the narrow pedestrian alley directly south of Pub Street, lined with small bars that change hands often and a handful of cocktail places pitched at a slightly older and better-funded crowd than the street. From its western end, Street 9 and the alleys around Street 11 continue toward Sok San Road, with the sound of Pub Street dropping by half every fifty meters. Venues here turn over too fast to name with confidence, which is exactly why the running list lives in the guide to the best bars in Siem Reap and is revised more often than this one.

West along Sok San Road to Kandal Village and X Bar

Sok San Road leaves the Pub Street district at its Sivatha end and runs west past hostels, cheap Khmer restaurants and the lanes of Kandal Village, a few blocks of small cafes, galleries and boutiques between Sivatha Boulevard and Sok San Road that close early and drink quietly. The guide to Sok San Road and Kandal Village covers the daytime version. At night the anchor is X Bar, a rooftop bar at the Sivatha end of Sok San Road with pool tables, foosball, beer pong, a half-pipe for skateboarding and DJs or live music later on. The verdict: the loudest of the alternatives and the closest in spirit to Pub Street, which makes it the right exit for a group that wants to keep going without the crush. The limitation: hours and the live schedule are not published reliably, and the rooftop is open to the weather. Onederz hostel, nearby on the Sok San side, runs a bar that functions as the backpacker living room of the town.

East over the river to Wat Bo

The Old Market bridge, a two-minute walk from the eastern end of Pub Street, is the exit most first-time visitors never take. On the far bank the river road runs north with the quietest bars in the center and, a few blocks in, the Wat Bo neighborhood of guesthouses, temples and Khmer restaurants described in the guide to the Wat Bo area.

Miss Wong, Street 26

The verdict: the best cocktail bar in Siem Reap and the one worth crossing the river for. Miss Wong is a 1920s-Shanghai room with crimson walls, black lacquer, leather booths and a cherry-red lantern at the door, founded by Dean Williams, a New Zealander and former radio journalist, with a second branch now open in Battambang. It is on Street 26, between the river and Wat Bo Road, not in The Lane where nearly every guide still puts it, and opens Tuesday to Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to midnight. The Indochine Martini, vodka with ginger cognac liqueur and pineapple, is the signature drink, cocktails average $7, and the food menu runs to dim sum, duck pancakes and hot pots. From the middle of Pub Street it is about ten minutes on foot via the Old Market bridge. The limitation: closed on Mondays, small enough to be full by 9:00 p.m. in December and January, and the drinks cost seven times a Pub Street beer, which is a fair description of the difference.

Hard Rock Cafe Angkor

The verdict: the dependable live music room of the town, in the King’s Road Angkor complex on the east bank a few minutes’ walk over the bridge. The cafe opens daily from 7:30 a.m. to midnight, the Rock Shop from 9:00 a.m., and the event calendar carries live bands and themed nights several times a month, with a house band on the bigger evenings. The limitation: it is a franchise with franchise prices, a burger costs what three Pub Street dinners cost, and the music is rock covers. For the local alternatives, including the Cambodian bands and the smaller rooms, see the guide to live music in Siem Reap.

North along the river: Scribe and the Elephant Bar

Two bars north of the Old Market belong to hotels and behave like it, which at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday is a recommendation.

Scribe Bar at FCC Angkor by Avani

The verdict: the best open-air bar for a long drink and live music in the center, in the garden of the former Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Pokambor Avenue, the west-bank river road, about 15 minutes’ walk or a $2 tuk-tuk north of Pub Street. Scribe opens from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., has live music on several evenings and relaunched its cocktail list in May 2025. Cocktails run $7 to $10. The limitation: it closes at 11:00 p.m., exactly when the second shift starts on Street 8, and the garden is mosquito territory in the rainy season.

Elephant Bar, Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor

The verdict: the colonial-era bar of the town, in the main building of the 1932 Raffles at 1 Vithei Charles de Gaulle, 1.2 kilometers north of the center at the top of the Royal Gardens, a $2 to $3 tuk-tuk ride. Happy hour runs daily from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., a pianist plays Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30 to 10:00 p.m., and the house drink is the Airavata, a rum and coconut cocktail named for the three-headed elephant of Khmer mythology. The dress code is smart casual, which the hotel defines as collared shirts and trousers for men and no flip-flops. The limitation: cocktails cost $12 to $16 and the dress code rules out anyone who has come straight from the temples in sandals.

The Night Beyond Bars

Siem Reap’s evening is not only drinking, and three of the alternatives sit within ten minutes of Pub Street.

Phare, the Cambodian Circus is the one evening in Siem Reap that justifies skipping dinner on the street. The show runs nightly at 8:00 p.m. under a big top off Ring Road, about 10 minutes by tuk-tuk from Pub Street, lasts about an hour and is performed by graduates of the Phare Ponleu Selpak school in Battambang. Tickets are $18, $28 and $38 by section, with children from $10, and the pre-show area with food stalls opens at 5:30 p.m. From November 2026 to March 2027 a 5:00 p.m. matinee runs on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, which is the option for anyone with a 4:30 a.m. alarm. The full case is in the guide to Phare, the Cambodian Circus.

The dinner shows are the seated alternative. Koulen Restaurant on Sivatha Boulevard runs a buffet with a free Apsara performance daily at 7:30 p.m., a walk from Pub Street. Raffles stages Apsara dance on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. and the Park Hyatt on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at the same hour, both with dinner. The comparison, including the formal wooden theaters of the Wat Bo side, is in the pillar guide to evening shows in Siem Reap.

The night markets open as the restaurants fill. The Art Center Night Market on the east bank by the Old Market bridge runs Monday to Saturday from 4:00 to 11:00 p.m. and closes on Sunday. Phalla Angkor Night Market, off Sivatha Boulevard, runs daily from 4:30 p.m. to midnight. Both sell souvenirs and offer massage. The original Angkor Night Market, where most older guides send people, has not reopened since the pandemic according to a local directory updated in October 2026. Which market sells what, and which stalls are Cambodian-made, is sorted out in the guide to the Siem Reap night markets, with the daytime markets in the pillar on Siem Reap markets.

Khmer Pub Street and Road 60. Siem Reap residents do not drink on Pub Street. They drink along the strip of beer gardens and restaurants on the northwest side of town known locally as Khmer Pub Street, and at the Road 60 fairground, a kilometer of food stalls, grilled meat, fairground rides and beer poured over ice east of the Angkor ticket office. Both are a 10 to 15 minute tuk-tuk ride, $3 to $4, and both are louder, cheaper and more Cambodian than anything on Street 8. The Road 60 food is covered in the guide to street food in Siem Reap. For the rooftop option at sunset, before any of this, see rooftop bars in Siem Reap. The full evening menu, from the circus to the markets to a riverside walk, is in things to do in Siem Reap at night.

By Situation

You have one night and a 4:30 a.m. sunrise

Phare at 8:00 p.m., or the Temple Balcony free show with dinner at 7:30 p.m. if the budget is tight. Walk Pub Street from end to end on the way back, which takes four minutes, and be in a tuk-tuk by 10:00 p.m. Skip the second shift entirely.

You want one proper cocktail and a quiet conversation

Asana in The Lane before 8:00 p.m., then Miss Wong across the river on Street 26 from 8:30 p.m. Both are within ten minutes’ walk of each other and of Pub Street. Not on a Monday, when Miss Wong is closed: use Scribe at FCC instead.

You are traveling with children

Dinner at the Khmer Family Restaurant at 6:30 p.m., the free dance performance at Temple Balcony at 7:30 p.m. and Khmer Gelato on the walk out. Leave by 9:00 p.m., before the sound systems go up. Phare on another night is the better children’s evening and the guide to Siem Reap with kids explains why.

You want the party

Pub Street from 10:30 p.m., Temple Club for the last stop, and X Bar on Sok San Road if the street gets too tight. Beer or sealed bottles rather than buckets, phone in a front pocket, and an app-booked ride home. A hostel on Sok San Road rather than on Street 8 so the party is a walk away, not downstairs.

You want to see what Cambodians do at night

Skip Street 8. A tuk-tuk to Road 60 for grilled food and beer on ice at 7:00 p.m., then Khmer Pub Street for a beer garden with a live band. Budget $3 to $4 each way for the tuk-tuk and expect to be the only foreigners at the table.

You are here in the rainy season

The same plan, an hour later. The rain usually clears by 8:00 p.m., Pub Street is half as crowded after 11:00 p.m. between May and October, and the covered venues, Asana’s wooden house, Miss Wong, the Temple Balcony and the Phare big top, are unaffected.

What It Actually Costs

Item	Price	Notes
Draft beer, Pub Street	$0.50 to $0.75	Small pour. $1 is the standard happy-hour price, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Bottled beer, Pub Street	$1.50 to $2.50	Angkor, Cambodia, Anchor
Cocktail, Pub Street	$3 to $5	Two-for-one before 7:00 p.m. at many bars
Bucket	$6 to $10	Shared. Unlabeled spirits: the methanol and spiking risk sits here
Cocktail, Miss Wong	About $7 average	Street 26, Tuesday to Sunday
Cocktail, Scribe at FCC	$7 to $10	Closes 11:00 p.m.
Cocktail, Elephant Bar at Raffles	$12 to $16	Happy hour 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Smart casual
Asana Herbal Cocktail Class	$20, or $18 online	Daily at 6:00 p.m., 90 minutes, three cocktails and shots
Main course, Khmer restaurant on Pub Street	$3 to $8	Khmer Family Restaurant, Banana Leaf
Main course, The Red Piano	$6 to $12	European menu
Free Apsara show, Temple Balcony	$0 with food and drink	Daily 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Phare, the Cambodian Circus	$18, $28, $38	Children $10 to $18. Nightly 8:00 p.m.
Fish spa	$1 to $2	About 15 minutes
Street foot massage	$2 to $5	Pavement chairs
Tuk-tuk within the center	$2 to $3	Fixed fare via PassApp or Grab
Tuk-tuk to Road 60 or Khmer Pub Street	$3 to $4	Each way
Riel change	4,000 riel to $1	Anything under $1 comes back in riel

An evening of one dinner on the street, two happy-hour beers, the free show and a tuk-tuk home costs about $12 per person. The same evening with Phare instead of the free show costs $30 to $50. A second-shift night with buckets and a 3:00 a.m. ride home costs whatever is in the wallet, which is the point of the buckets. For how this fits a day’s spending in Siem Reap, see the pillar on the Siem Reap daily budget.

What Other Guides Get Wrong

1. Listing Angkor What? as the bar to start the night. The 1998 original reopened after the pandemic and drew reviews into January 2025, but a local guide updated in October 2026 calls it closed. Neither source is recent enough to plan a night around. Walk past and look first.
2. Placing Miss Wong in The Lane. It is on Street 26 across the river, Tuesday to Sunday, and has been since it moved. Half the “best bars in Siem Reap” lists send people to an empty doorway.
3. Treating “Temple” as one bar. Temple Club, Temple Bar and Temple Balcony are floors of one building on Pub Street. Temple Sky Lounge is a different rooftop on the river road, and Temple Design is a pizza restaurant on Sok San Road. Reviews of one are applied to the others.
4. Quoting the $0.50 beer as the price of a night out. It is a small glass sold at a door price before 7:00 p.m. The cocktails, buckets and food that follow cost Siem Reap prices, and the second round is $1.50 to $2.50.
5. Calling happy pizza a gray area or a local custom. Cannabis is illegal in Cambodia in food as in any other form. Enforcement is inconsistent, which is a reason for caution, not a loophole. The UK Foreign Office’s phrase is zero tolerance.
6. Reviewing Pub Street as if it were one place at one hour. The restaurant street at 7:00 p.m. and the party street at midnight share an address and nothing else. A guide that does not say which one it is describing is not describing the street.

Detailed Guides

• Best bars in Siem Reap away from the noise ranks the cocktail bars, hotel bars and alley bars within ten minutes of Pub Street, and is the list that gets revised when venues open and close.
• Siem Reap night markets: which is which separates the Angkor Night Market, the Art Center market and the smaller ones, and says which stalls sell Cambodian-made goods.
• Live music in Siem Reap covers the Hard Rock Cafe, Scribe, the Cambodian bands of Khmer Pub Street and the small rooms, with the nights each one plays.
• Things to do in Siem Reap at night beyond Pub Street builds the full evening: sunset, show, dinner, market, walk.
• Rooftop bars in Siem Reap settles which rooftops have a view and which have a railing, and when the sun actually goes down by month.
• Is Pub Street worth eating on? gives the honest answer and the three exceptions.
• Pub Street and the Old Market as a neighborhood covers the daytime market, the French-era blocks and whether to sleep within earshot.
• Siem Reap scams to avoid is the full catalog, from the baby formula routine to the tuk-tuk detour to the temple-gate guide.
• Is Siem Reap safe? covers bag snatching, drink spiking, the hospitals and the honest picture for solo and female travelers.
• Evening shows in Siem Reap compares Phare, the dinner shows and the shadow puppets so the free performance on Pub Street can be judged against the paid ones.

Where to Go Next

If Pub Street is settled as a walk-through rather than a destination, the evening itself is built in things to do in Siem Reap at night, and the drinking is sorted by neighborhood in the best bars in Siem Reap. The one show worth the hour before the bars is argued in the pillar on evening shows in Siem Reap. For the geography of what surrounds the street, from the Old Market to Wat Bo across the bridge, the pillar on Siem Reap neighborhoods is the map, and for what the whole evening costs against the rest of the day, the Siem Reap daily budget does the sums.