Phnom Penh adventure travel guide

  

Phnom Penh Highlights (Edit)

Phnom Penh is an amazing city. For all its lack of wealth the development taking place here is amazing and there is not a street in the city it appears where development is taking place. The Royal Palace is a beautiful structure and the Genocide Museum and Killing Fields are chilling to see but a must for any visitor.

Eating is fantastic here and places such as the FCC for the Western eaters or Boat Noodles for the Khmer food fancier are both excellent choices. Drinking is Cheap near the lakeside in the main backpacker area and the Heart of Darkness is a small cramped club worth a look on Ph 51 and free to get in but even better is the close by Elsewhere, also on Ph 51, which is housed in the gardens of a colonial villa with a swimming pool, dance floor is outside and plenty of places to chill out around the pool. Closes around 5am. Average beer costs range between a $1-2 and long happy hours are plentiful at any bar in town.  There are food stalls at night in front of Psar O Russei and in the street one block back from this towards Sihanouk Bvld is a lively bar and restaurant selling jugs of Angkor Beer for 8000r, $2.

For those willing to learn the local language, Suat S'dai is Hello and Aw Kohn is thank you. Te is also useful as it means no and helps to keep away unwanted moto drivers!

In saying that the best and cheapest way around is by moto although if travelling within the city it is useful to have some local currency as $1 is normally too much to pay.

Two things not to miss are the Choeng Elk Killing fields $2 entry and the Tuol Sleng Museum (s21 detention centre) $2. They are both very thought provoking and a bit depressing but the museum especially is informative and not to be missed. There is a film shown at  10am and 3pm daily so try to time your visit with this. Three of us hired a cyclo for half a day to take us out to Choeung Elk and then bring us back to the city to the museum, the cyclo cost $5 for all 3 of us.

The Royal palace and Silver Pagoda is a hefty 25,000 r to get into and most of it is out of bounds so unless palaces are your thing it is not money well spent.