Siem Reap Neighborhoods Explained: Old Market, Wat Bo, Sok San, Riverside and the Resort Strip (2026)

Siem Reap is a small town, and the question of which area to stay in is smaller than the hotel guides make it. From the Old Market, every neighborhood in this guide except the National Road 6 strip is a walk of 25 minutes or less. Angkor Wat is 15 to 20 minutes by tuk-tuk from all of them. What changes from one area to the next is how far you walk to dinner and what you hear through the window at 11:00 p.m. Those two facts should decide the booking, and almost nothing else should.

Search results treat Siem Reap as a city of districts, each with a character: the party quarter, the French quarter, the expat quarter, the resort strip. Most of those districts are three streets long. The character is real but thin, and it changes faster than the guides are rewritten, because this town opens and closes restaurants at a pace that would embarrass a bigger city. What does not change is the geography. The river runs north to south through the middle. The Old Market sits on its west bank. Pub Street is one block west of that. Everything else is measured from there, in minutes on foot and in decibels after dark.

This guide walks the eight areas a visitor will actually see, in that order of usefulness: what each one sounds like at 11:00 p.m., what you eat there, how many minutes you are from the temples, and who should sleep there. Prices, hours and transport times below were checked against operator websites and official sources in October 2026.

The Two Questions That Matter: Walking Minutes and the 11 p.m. Test

Put a pin on the Old Market and draw a circle with a 1-kilometer radius. Inside it are Pub Street, Kandal Village, the south end of the riverside, the Wat Bo streets across the river and the edge of Wat Damnak. That circle holds most of the restaurants a visitor will eat in, both night markets, the two useful bridges and nearly every hotel under $150 a night. If a hotel is inside the circle, the neighborhood name on the booking page barely matters. If it is outside, the name is doing a lot of work, and the honest question is how many tuk-tuk rides a day it will cost.

The second question is noise, and the 11:00 p.m. test is a simple way to ask it. Stand at the hotel door at 11:00 p.m. and listen. On Street 08 and the streets touching it, you hear competing sound systems. On Wat Bo Road you hear motorbikes. On Street 26 or Hup Guan Street you hear a dog and a generator. On Charles de Gaulle Boulevard you hear nothing at all, and a tuk-tuk home from dinner has cost $3. Siem Reap is a town that wakes at 4:30 a.m. for sunrise at Angkor Wat, so the 11:00 p.m. test is also a sleep test, and it separates the areas far better than any description of their atmosphere.

Proximity to the temples is the question first-time visitors ask and the one that matters least. Angkor Wat is about 7 to 8 km north of the Old Market along Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. Raffles, at the boulevard’s southern end, gives 8 km from its own door. The Sofitel, halfway up, gives 10 minutes. The difference between the farthest central hotel and the nearest resort is 5 minutes each way, and every vehicle passes the same checkpoint on the way in. Nobody walks to Angkor Wat from a hotel. The Angkor Pass guide covers the ticket office and the checkpoint, and getting around Siem Reap covers what the ride should cost. Pick the neighborhood for the town, not for the temples.

How the Town Is Laid Out

The Siem Reap River runs north to south and splits the town in two. The west bank holds the Old Market, Pub Street, Kandal Village and Sivatha Boulevard, the commercial spine 400 meters west of the river. The east bank holds Wat Bo, the quieter residential streets north of it, and Wat Damnak to the south. Several bridges cross the river in the center, including a footbridge at the Old Market and a road bridge by Wat Damnak that the Spoons Café directions use as a landmark. The river itself is a slow, brown channel with a paved path on the west bank, Pokambor Avenue, which is the one continuous walk in town.

North of the center the river passes the Royal Independence Gardens, the fan-shaped park in front of Raffles, and from there Charles de Gaulle Boulevard runs due north to the Angkor checkpoint. National Road 6 is the east-west highway. West on it lies the old airport, which closed to commercial flights when the new Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport opened on October 16, 2023, about 50 km east. Road 60 runs east from the northern edge of town toward the Angkor ticket office and is where Cambodian families eat in the evening. Everything in this guide can be placed on that map in a sentence, which is the point.

The Neighborhoods, One by One

Old Market and Pub Street

The honest verdict: the right place to eat and shop, the wrong place to sleep unless the room faces away from Street 08. The Old Market, Psar Chas, stands on 2 Thnou Street between Pub Street and the river, and it is the address every business in town uses as a reference. Inside are souvenir stalls on the tourist side and produce, dried fish, prahok and grilled frogs on the Cambodian side. Guides give its hours as roughly 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., with stall-holders setting their own. Pub Street is Street 08, one block west. It is closed to traffic in the evening, its bars turn the volume up around 9:00 p.m., and Street 11 off it has grown a line of carts selling cheap cocktails. The guide to Pub Street and the Old Market covers the streets one by one, and the Pub Street guide for people who would rather not says which bars are survivable.

At 11:00 p.m. this is the loudest square kilometer in Cambodia outside Phnom Penh. Three or four sound systems compete on Street 08, and the noise carries two streets in each direction. Bars run past midnight. No closing time is published for the street, and a nightlife listing checked in February 2026 says most places stay open until 2:00 a.m. or later at weekends. The Lane and Alley West, the small pedestrian passages between Street 08 and the market, are quieter and hold the better restaurants, though they empty when the bars fill. By 7:00 a.m. the area is a market again and the bars are shuttered.

What you eat: everything, at every price, and most of it aimed at visitors. The Lane and Alley West have the Khmer and Western restaurants that have survived several cycles of openings and closings. The market has fruit, fried noodles and coffee for a dollar or two. The best restaurants by neighborhood names the handful worth a table on this side of the river. Angkor Wat is 15 to 20 minutes by tuk-tuk, and drivers wait at every corner from 4:30 a.m.

Who it suits: travelers who want to walk out of the hotel into dinner and back without a vehicle, and anyone staying one night. Who should avoid it: light sleepers, families with young children, and anyone planning three sunrise mornings. The limitation is blunt: a hotel one block from Pub Street is a hotel one block from Pub Street, whatever the photos of the pool suggest, and the only fix is a room at the back with the air conditioning on.

Wat Bo and the East Bank

The honest verdict: the best balance in town for most visitors, 5 to 10 minutes on foot from the Old Market, with a cafe on every corner and no bar strip. Wat Bo is the area east of the river named for its pagoda on Wat Bo Road, the north-south street that carries the district’s traffic. The numbered cross-streets, Street 23 through Street 27, run from Wat Bo Road down to the river, and they hold most of the places a visitor will use. Street 26 has Miss Wong, the cocktail bar, open Tuesday to Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to midnight, Footprint Cafés, Banlle, Tevy’s Place and a Paris Bakery at the corner with Wat Bo Road, and Angkor Village Hotel, 43 rooms in wooden buildings around ponds, with the Apsara Theatre and Aaraama, its Khmer restaurant, in the grounds. Street 27 has The Sugar Palm and Dialogue Café. Street 24 has Viroth’s Hotel, 35 rooms, and the Oko Gallery. Treeline Urban Resort, 48 rooms, stands on Achasva Street, the riverside road on the east bank. Maison 557 is at 557 Wat Bo Road. The Wat Bo guide goes building by building.

At 11:00 p.m. Wat Bo Road still has motorbikes. The cross-streets have almost nothing. Miss Wong closes at midnight and the restaurants earlier. The sound that does carry is the one no hotel can control: a wedding or a funeral in a residential street means a tent across the road and amplified chanting from 5:00 a.m., for a day or three. It happens in every neighborhood, but Wat Bo is residential enough for it to happen more often than on Pub Street.

What you eat: this is the neighborhood with the most Khmer kitchens run for a mixed Cambodian and visitor crowd. Wat Bo Road itself has noodle shops, hot-pot places and barbecue joints where the menu is in Khmer first. Por Noodle Soup on 7 Makara Road, at the southern end, is the breakfast stop. Spoons Café, the training restaurant, is off Wat Bo Road near the 7 Makara end and gives directions from the Old Market by way of the Wat Damnak bridge and the roundabout. For dinner, Street 26 and Street 27 cover a Khmer tasting menu, a Khmer home-style kitchen and a vegetarian one within 200 meters of each other. The Khmer restaurants guide ranks them.

Minutes to the temples: 15 to 20 by tuk-tuk, the same as the Old Market, because the route runs back across the river and up Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. Who it suits: couples, first-time visitors, anyone who wants to walk to dinner and sleep afterward, and families, because the streets are safe to cross with a stroller in a way Street 08 is not. The limitation: a room facing Wat Bo Road hears traffic until late and from early, so ask for the back or for a cross-street, and the walk to the Old Market crosses a river that smells in the dry season.

Sok San Road and Kandal Village

The honest verdict: two different places that share a side of town, one for coffee and one for a cheap bed near the circus. Kandal Village is Hup Guan Street, a short street behind Samdech Tep Vong Road, which locals call ANZ Bank Road, between the Old Market and the French-era streets to the north. It is a 5-minute walk west of the market. The Little Red Fox Espresso at number 593 anchors it, open 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and closed on Wednesdays, with a hair salon upstairs and the cold-drip coffee that built its reputation. Around it are a spa, a home-wares shop, an atelier and an Italian kitchen, in a row of two-story shophouses, though the row has lost several tenants since 2020 and the names change. The Sok San Road and Kandal Village guide keeps the current list, and the coffee guide covers the roasters.

Sok San Road runs west from Sivatha Boulevard toward Ring Road. Its eastern end, near Sivatha, is hostels, massage shops, bars with pool tables and guesthouses in the $15 to $40 range. Its far western end is where Phare, the Cambodian Circus, raises its big top on Ring Road just south of the Sok San Road intersection, 2 km from the Old Market. The show starts at 8:00 p.m. every night of the year, runs an hour, and costs $18, $28 or $38 by section, with children 5 to 11 at $10, $15 or $18. Phare says a tuk-tuk from most of town is $3 to $5 each way. The Phare guide covers which show is on which night.

At 11:00 p.m. Kandal Village is silent, since nothing on Hup Guan Street serves after dinner. Sok San Road is not silent. The hostel bars near Sivatha run late, and the road carries traffic between Ring Road and the center. The western half, past the hostels, is dark by 10:00 p.m. once the Phare crowd has gone home.

What you eat: in Kandal Village, breakfast and lunch. The Little Red Fox does bagels and a tofu scramble, and the Italian kitchen across the road does fresh pasta. On Sok San Road, the eating is cheap and Western at the Sivatha end and Cambodian the farther west you go. Minutes to the temples: 15 to 20 from Kandal Village, 20 to 25 from the Sok San end, since the route goes back through town. Who it suits: Kandal Village for anyone who wants a quiet room 5 minutes from the market and a good coffee before the tuk-tuk, Sok San Road for backpackers and for anyone building an evening around Phare. The limitation: Kandal Village has one street and no evening life at all, and Sok San Road is the part of town where bag snatching from motorbikes has been reported, so carry nothing loose after dark. The safety guide covers the pattern.

Riverside and the Royal Gardens

The honest verdict: the prettiest 15-minute walk in town and the quietest central place to sleep above $150 a night. Pokambor Avenue runs along the west bank from the Old Market north to the Royal Independence Gardens, a paved path under big trees with the river on one side and shophouses, a pagoda and a few hotels on the other. Sister Srey Café at 200 Pokambor Avenue, run since 2012 by the Gravett sisters, is the breakfast stop at the Old Market end. Wat Preah Prom Rath, the pagoda with the painted walls, is halfway along. At the north end the gardens open out in a fan in front of Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, 1 Vithei Charles de Gaulle, 119 rooms, open since 1932 and reopened under the Raffles name on December 30, 1997. The shrine of Preah Ang Chek Preah Ang Chorm at the gardens’ edge draws Cambodian families in the evening, with incense, lotus buds and caged birds for release. The riverside walk describes it end to end.

Behind the gardens, the streets of the old administrative quarter hold the hotels that call this the Royal District. Shinta Mani Angkor, 105 rooms and suites plus 10 Bensley pool villas, describes Pub Street as a short walk, and it is, about 15 minutes. The Angkor National Museum stands at No. 968 Vithei Preah Sihanouk, where that avenue meets Charles de Gaulle Boulevard, open 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. from April to September and to 6:30 p.m. from October to March. The museum guide settles whether to go before or after the temples. The Made in Cambodia Market, a craft market of Cambodian-made goods, moved from Kings Road to Oum Khun Street in this quarter, with most stalls open from noon to 8:00 p.m.

At 11:00 p.m. the riverside is dark and almost empty. The gardens close in on themselves, the shrine’s visitors have gone, and the only sound is traffic on the bridge by Raffles. This is the quietest central address in Siem Reap, and the hotels price it that way.

What you eat: breakfast at Sister Srey, and dinner mostly in the hotels, since the riverside north of the market has fewer independent restaurants than Wat Bo. The walk back from the Old Market restaurants is 10 to 15 minutes along a lit path. Minutes to the temples: 12 to 15, because the hotels sit at the foot of Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. Who it suits: honeymooners, anyone who wants a garden and a serious pool within a walk of the market, and anyone who has been to Siem Reap before and wants the morning walk along the river. The limitation: there is no cheap bed here, and the gardens that make the riverside pleasant by day are unlit and deserted after 10:00 p.m., so the walk home is along the road, not through them.

Wat Damnak

The honest verdict: the neighborhood for a second visit, or a first visit by someone who already knows they want quiet, a wooden house and the town’s best dinner. Wat Damnak is the area on the east bank south of Wat Bo, named for the pagoda that was King Sisowath’s royal residence from 1904 to 1927 and became a monastery when the court moved. The pagoda grounds house the Center for Khmer Studies, founded in 1999 with the World Monuments Fund, and its library is open to the public. The monks founded the Life and Hope Association in 2005. The village streets around the pagoda are dusty, shaded and residential, with houses on stilts and a scattering of guesthouses.

The reason to come is Cuisine Wat Damnak, the restaurant of Joannès Rivière, in a wooden house in Wat Damnak village between Psa Dey Hoy market and Angkor High School. It serves dinner Monday to Saturday from 6:30 p.m., with last orders at 9:00 p.m., and the tasting menu is $45 a person, or $38 vegetarian, plus 5 percent service and 10 percent tax. Guests must be 12 or older. Sala Lodges, at No. 498 Sala Kamreuk, is eleven traditional wooden Cambodian houses moved from the countryside and rebuilt around a pool, a 5-minute walk from the pagoda. Bambu Stage on Bamboo Street in Wat Damnak village stages shadow puppetry in the evening. Haven, the training restaurant, is on Chocolate Road in Sala Kamreuk commune, open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. with the kitchen closing at 9:30 p.m.

At 11:00 p.m. Wat Damnak is the quietest of the walkable neighborhoods. There are no bars. The sound is dogs, frogs in the wet season and the monastery’s gong before dawn. It is also dark, with few streetlights, so a torch on the phone is part of the walk home.

What you eat: the two restaurants named above and the Khmer stalls at Psa Dey Hoy market in the morning. For anything else, the Old Market is a 10- to 15-minute walk back across the Wat Damnak bridge. Minutes to the temples: 20, the longest of the central areas, because the route crosses the river and the whole town. Who it suits: repeat visitors, couples who have booked Cuisine Wat Damnak and want to walk to it, and anyone who sleeps badly in cities. The limitation: there is almost nothing to do here between breakfast and dinner, the walk to the market is through unremarkable streets, and in the wet season the lanes flood.

Sivatha Boulevard and Taphul

The honest verdict: the practical middle of town, where the mid-range hotels and both night markets are, and where nobody goes for the atmosphere. Sivatha Boulevard is the four-lane commercial street 400 meters west of the river, running north to south past banks, pharmacies, phone shops and the big Cambodian restaurants that host dinner shows. Phalla Angkor Night Market opens off it, a few minutes’ walk from Pub Street, daily from 4:30 p.m. to midnight. The original Angkor Night Market, on the street named after it, has an uncertain status: a local directory updated in October 2026 says it has not reopened since the pandemic, while Google reviews up to July 2026 describe vendors trading on that street. Onederz Hostel, with four pools, is 2 minutes from Pub Street in this pocket. Taphul Road and the Taphul village streets run west of Sivatha, a grid of three- and four-story hotels with pools and rooftop bars in the $30 to $80 range. The night markets guide sorts out which market is which, and the cheap hotels and hostels guide covers the beds.

At 11:00 p.m. Sivatha is traffic, and the night market bars are loud until they close. Taphul is quieter, one block in, but the hotel rooftop bars are open and sound carries across the low roofs. A room on an inner courtyard in Taphul is quiet. A room on Sivatha is not.

What you eat: the dinner-show buffets, the night market stalls, the Cambodian restaurants with long menus and plastic chairs on the side streets, and the air-conditioned coffee chains. Nothing here is a reason to cross town. Minutes to the temples: 15 to 20. Who it suits: travelers on a budget who want a pool for the afternoon and Pub Street at walking distance without sleeping on it, and anyone who needs a pharmacy, an ATM and a SIM card shop within 200 meters. The pools guide names the ones worth the afternoon. The limitation: this is the part of Siem Reap that looks like every other provincial Southeast Asian town, and from a Taphul hotel the walk to the river is 10 to 15 minutes along a road without shade.

Charles de Gaulle Boulevard and the Road to the Temples

The honest verdict: the resort strip, for a temple-centered stay with a big pool and a tuk-tuk for every meal. Charles de Gaulle Boulevard, called Vithei Charles de Gaulle on addresses, leaves the Royal Gardens and runs north through trees to the Angkor checkpoint. Raffles stands at number 1. Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Golf and Spa Resort, 238 rooms with an 18-hole course, is on the boulevard and puts Angkor Wat at 10 minutes. Amansara, 24 suites in what was a 1960s royal guesthouse, is on the Road to Angkor, the same axis, and gives 10 minutes to Angkor Wat and 60 minutes to the airport. Further north and off the boulevard, the Slorkram and Treang village streets along the river hold the boutique hotels that advertise themselves as between town and temples: Jaya House River Park, 36 rooms on River Road in Treang village, which says it is a 6-minute tuk-tuk from town, and Heritage Suites Hotel near Wat Polanka in Slokram, which gives 15 minutes to the temples. Mahob Khmer Cuisine, at No. 137 Traing village, Slorkram, serves lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily and is the one restaurant out here worth the ride on its own. The Charles de Gaulle and resort strip guide covers the hotels in detail.

At 11:00 p.m. the boulevard is silent. There are no bars, few houses and little traffic once the dinner tuk-tuks are back. The hotels are set back behind walls and gardens. For sleep this is the best address in Siem Reap, and for a 4:30 a.m. start it saves 5 minutes.

What you eat: the hotel restaurants, Mahob, and whatever a tuk-tuk brings you to. Jaya House and Heritage Suites are a 6- to 10-minute ride from the Old Market restaurants. The Sofitel and Amansara are 10 to 15. Nobody walks it after dark, and in the afternoon heat nobody should. Minutes to the temples: 10 to 12. Who it suits: travelers who have come for Angkor and a pool, luxury travelers, and families who will eat in the hotel most nights. The luxury hotels guide and the guide to hotels near Angkor Wat say what the $300 buys. The limitation: every coffee, every dinner and every change of plan is a $3 to $5 ride each way, and the boulevard itself, for all its trees, is a road with nothing on it.

National Road 6, Road 60 and the Airport Question

The honest verdict: not a neighborhood to stay in, but two roads a visitor will use. National Road 6 is the highway that runs east-west through the north of town. West of the center it passes the old airport, closed since the new one opened on October 16, 2023, and a line of large hotels and convention resorts built for tour groups. Sokha Siem Reap Resort and Convention Center is the biggest and gives 10 minutes to the city center, which is a fair count in a car and 15 in a tuk-tuk. East of the center the highway runs 50 km to Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport, a drive of 50 to 70 minutes. The fixed taxi fare from the airport counter is $35 for a car of up to three and $40 to $45 for a minivan, and the shuttle bus is $8. The airport to city guide covers every option, and the honest summary is that no hotel is near the airport and none should pretend to be.

Road 60 runs east from the northern edge of town toward the Angkor ticket office and is the one stretch out here worth a deliberate visit. From about 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. its roadside turns into the Road 60 night market, where Cambodian families picnic on mats and eat grilled quail, beef on skewers, noodles and fried insects from stalls that do not post prices in English. Point, ask the price, then order. The ticket office of Angkor Enterprise, where the Angkor Pass is sold at $37 for one day, $62 for three and $72 for seven, is on the same road, and tuk-tuk drivers stop there on the way to sunrise. The street food guide covers what to eat and what to skip.

At 11:00 p.m. the National Road 6 hotels are quiet behind their walls, and the highway is trucks. Road 60 is winding down. Who it suits: tour groups with a bus, convention delegates, and anyone who booked a resort pool at a group rate and does not mind a tuk-tuk for every meal. The limitation: a hotel out here is a hotel out here, the walk to anything is along a highway, and the airport argument that once justified the location has moved 50 km to the other side of town.

Minutes to the Temples From Each Area

Area	Walk to the Old Market	Tuk-tuk to Angkor Wat	Noise at 11:00 p.m.
Old Market and Pub Street	0 to 5 minutes	15 to 20 minutes	Loud on Street 08 and the streets touching it
Wat Bo	5 to 10 minutes	15 to 20 minutes	Traffic on Wat Bo Road, quiet on the cross-streets
Kandal Village	5 minutes	15 to 20 minutes	Silent
Sok San Road	10 to 20 minutes	20 to 25 minutes	Hostel bars at the Sivatha end
Riverside and Royal Gardens	10 to 15 minutes	12 to 15 minutes	Quiet
Wat Damnak	10 to 15 minutes	About 20 minutes	Silent and dark
Sivatha and Taphul	5 to 15 minutes	15 to 20 minutes	Traffic on Sivatha, rooftop bars in Taphul
Charles de Gaulle Boulevard	25 to 40 minutes, not walked	10 to 12 minutes	Silent
National Road 6	Not walked	15 to 20 minutes	Highway

The tuk-tuk times assume the usual route up Charles de Gaulle Boulevard to the Angkor Wat moat and a driver who knows the checkpoint. At 4:45 a.m. in December, add 10 minutes for the queue at the checkpoint, from any neighborhood.

By Situation

You are visiting for the first time and have three nights

Wat Bo. The cross-streets between Street 24 and Street 27 put dinner, coffee and a cocktail on foot, the river walk to the Old Market takes 5 to 10 minutes, and the room is quiet by 11:00 p.m. if it does not face Wat Bo Road. The best area to stay guide makes the full case against the Old Market side and the resort strip. If the budget stretches past $150, the streets behind the Royal Gardens are the alternative, with a longer walk and a better pool.

You are a light sleeper or traveling with a baby

Wat Damnak or Kandal Village. Both are silent by 10:00 p.m., both are a 5- to 15-minute walk from the market, and neither has a bar. Wat Damnak is darker and prettier, Kandal Village is closer and has the better breakfast. Ask any hotel in either for a room away from the street anyway, since a single karaoke party can undo a quiet neighborhood for one night.

You want a pool for the afternoon and do not care about walking to dinner

Charles de Gaulle Boulevard, or the Slorkram and Treang streets along the river north of the gardens. The Sofitel and Amansara are the resort version. Jaya House River Park and Heritage Suites are the boutique version, 6 to 10 minutes from town by tuk-tuk, with Mahob for dinner on the way back. Budget $3 to $5 per ride and two rides a day.

You are on a backpacker budget

Sok San Road at the Sivatha end, or the Taphul streets. Hostels with pools and a bar within 5 minutes of Pub Street are the standard, and the cheap hotels and hostels guide names the ones with good beds. Expect noise from the hostel bar, and book a dorm away from it if the sunrise is on the plan.

You want to walk out into bars and restaurants and back without a tuk-tuk

The Old Market streets, with a room facing away from Street 08. The Lane and Alley West are quieter than Pub Street and 1 minute from it. Accept that the music will be audible until after midnight and plan the sunrise for a later morning.

You have been before and want the town more than the temples

The riverside or Wat Damnak. Breakfast at Sister Srey, the walk to the gardens, the Angkor National Museum, Cuisine Wat Damnak for dinner and Phare on the way home cover two days without a single temple, and the guide to Siem Reap without the temples fills a third.

What It Actually Costs

The neighborhood changes what a bed costs more than what a day costs. Food and transport are cheap everywhere in Siem Reap, and the difference between areas is whether the transport is needed at all.

Item	Price	Notes
Tuk-tuk inside the center, agreed on the street	$2 to $3	PassApp and Grab quote fixed fares, often $1.50 to $4 depending on time of day
Tuk-tuk to Phare from most hotels	$3 to $5 each way	Phare’s own figure, drivers wait after the show
Tuk-tuk from the Charles de Gaulle hotels to the Old Market	$3 to $5	Two rides a day adds $6 to $10 to a resort stay
Hostel dorm bed, Sok San or Taphul	$5 to $9	Onederz and Mad Monkey in 2025 and 2026 listings. Pool and bar usually included
Guesthouse or hostel double, Wat Bo or Taphul	$15 to $60	Late October and early November 2026 listings: hostel privates $15 to $38, Memoire d’Angkor $42 to $62. Back rooms cost the same as front rooms and sleep better
Boutique hotel, Wat Bo or the riverside	$140 to $350	Viroth’s publishes $139 to $275, Shinta Mani from about $160, Jaya House $338 for a night in January 2026
Resort on Charles de Gaulle Boulevard	$150 upward	Sofitel from $151 and Raffles from $218 for late October and early November 2026, with Amansara at $1,400 to $1,650
Phare ticket	$18, $28 or $38	Children 5 to 11 at $10, $15 or $18
Cuisine Wat Damnak tasting menu	$45, or $38 vegetarian	Plus 5 percent service and 10 percent tax
Angkor Pass	$37 one day, $62 three days, $72 seven days	Sold at the Angkor Enterprise office on Road 60 and in the app
Airport taxi, fixed fare	$35 car, $45 minivan	50 km, 50 to 70 minutes, shuttle bus $8

Dollars are accepted everywhere and change under $1 comes back in riel at about 4,000 to the dollar. Torn or written-on dollar bills are refused in shops and by drivers, so check the notes an ATM gives. The daily budget guide builds the full day, and the money guide explains the riel.

What Other Guides Get Wrong

1. Treating the areas as far apart. The usual guide describes five or six neighborhoods as if choosing between them were choosing between arrondissements. From the Old Market, Wat Bo is a 5-minute walk, Kandal Village is 5, the Royal Gardens are 15 and Wat Damnak is 15. Only the Charles de Gaulle hotels and National Road 6 are genuinely a ride away. The decision is smaller than it looks.

2. Selling proximity to the temples. Hotels on Charles de Gaulle Boulevard are 10 minutes from Angkor Wat. Hotels in Wat Bo are 15 to 20. The 5 to 10 minutes saved on the way out are paid back twice a day on the way to dinner. No neighborhood is walking distance from any temple, and the Angkor Pass checkpoint is the same for everyone.

3. Calling Wat Bo quiet without qualification. The cross-streets are quiet. Wat Bo Road is a through road with traffic from 5:00 a.m. to midnight, and residential streets anywhere in Cambodia host weddings and funerals with loudspeakers from dawn. Ask for a room at the back, in any neighborhood.

4. Listing Pub Street hotels as central and leaving it there. Central is true. So is a sound system 30 meters away until after midnight. Guides that rank hotels by distance to Pub Street should also rank them by distance from it, and the best rooms in the area are the ones facing away from Street 08.

5. Describing Kandal Village and Wat Bo from a 2019 list. Both have lost a third or more of the businesses that made their names, and new ones have opened in their place. A guide that names a cafe on Hup Guan Street should say when it last checked. This one checked in October 2026, and the names here will need checking again in a year.

6. Keeping the airport-road hotels in the airport category. The old airport on National Road 6 closed in October 2023. The new one is 50 km east. A hotel that was 10 minutes from the terminal is now 70, like every other hotel in town, and the only remaining reason to stay on National Road 6 is a group rate.

Detailed Guides

• Pub Street and the Old Market settles what the two blocks are for, which streets are loud and when the market is worth walking through.
• Wat Bo, the quiet side of the river walks Street 23 to Street 27 and Wat Bo Road and says which rooms hear the traffic.
• Sok San Road and Kandal Village keeps the current list of cafes and shops on Hup Guan Street and the hostels toward Phare.
• The Siem Reap riverside walk goes from the Royal Gardens to Wat Preah Prom Rath and says what time of day to do it.
• Charles de Gaulle Boulevard and the resort strip says who should stay out here and what the tuk-tuk bill will be.
• Where to stay in Siem Reap matches hotels to traveler types across every area in this guide.
• Best area to stay in Siem Reap argues the Old Market against Wat Bo against the resort strip and picks one.
• Getting around Siem Reap covers tuk-tuks, PassApp, Grab and what every ride in this guide should cost.
• Siem Reap markets explains the Old Market, the Made in Cambodia Market, the night markets and Psar Leu, and which one sells Cambodian things.

Where to Go Next

With a neighborhood chosen, the hotel is the next decision, and where to stay in Siem Reap sorts the options by traveler type rather than by star rating. The ride from the new airport is covered in the airport to city guide, and the 4:30 a.m. start that every neighborhood shares is explained in the Angkor Wat sunrise guide. For what to do once the bags are down, the three-day itinerary is built around a central hotel and the walking times above.