KhmerRooms Journal
Stories & Guides
Cambodia, written from the inside — temples, towns and coast, with the local move every time.
KhmerRooms Journal · Kampot
Bokor Hill
The moment you leave Kampot town and start climbing, everything changes. The road up Bokor winds through Preah Monivong National Park in a series of sweeping curves, and with every turn the view gets a little wilder. It's a smooth, well-paved road, so you can actually enjoy the ride instead of gripping the seat in front of you. Give yourself time to stop along the way. There are viewpoints that are perfect for photos, and honestly, half the joy of Bokor is the journey up, not just what's waiting at the top.
July 6, 2026
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The Heritage
The Royal Palace
Unlike a lot of royal sites around the world that have been turned entirely into museums, the Royal Palace is still an active residence. The King of Cambodia lives and works here, which gives the whole complex a different kind of energy than your typical historical attraction. You're not just looking at the past, you're standing beside something that's still very much part of the present. Certain areas are reserved for royal use and closed to visitors, which only adds to the intrigue as you wander the grounds that are open. There's a quiet formality to the place, guards posted at intervals, manicured gardens lining the walkways, buildings kept in pristine condition.
July 6, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Kep
Rabbit Island
Getting to Koh Tonsay is part of the charm. A short boat ride from Kep pier, maybe twenty-five minutes if the water's calm, carries you away from the mainland and into a completely different rhythm of life. There are no cars here, no paved roads, no glowing signs pulling your attention. The island is small enough to walk across in an hour, but that's not really the point. Koh Tonsay isn't about covering ground, it's about disconnecting completely. Phone signal gets patchy, which honestly feels like a gift rather than an inconvenience. You arrive, drop your bag, and immediately understand why so many travelers plan for one night and end up staying three.
July 6, 2026
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The Teasure Hunt
Russian Market
This is the one to come to when you want to find something. The labyrinth is famous for its treasure-hunt energy — silk scarves and stone carvings, miniature Buddhas, ceramics turned by hand, antiques, racks of clothing carrying every brand label imaginable (most of them optimistic) at prices that make you laugh. Wander deep enough toward the back and the souvenirs give way to a wonderful jumble of scooter and machine parts, all brake discs and tangled wire — proof that for all the tourists, this is still a market where the neighbourhood gets its actual errands done.
June 30, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Phnom Penh
Central Markets
A Cambodian market is not just shopping. It is the engine room of a community: produce trucked in from the provinces before dawn, gold weighed on tiny scales, knock-off football shirts hung next to hand-loomed silk, and somewhere in the middle of it all a woman ladling out the best noodle soup you will eat all trip. The aisles are narrow, the air is thick, the prices are a conversation rather than a number. Once you understand that rhythm, the market stops being chaotic and starts reading like the most honest tour of Cambodian daily life you can take. Here are three of Phnom Penh’s great markets: one a colonial-era landmark, one the city’s favourite treasure-hunt, and one almost nobody puts in a guidebook. Together they are the best window in the city into how Cambodians actually shop, eat and spend a morning. Take them slowly, come hungry, and bring small notes. You will spot it before anyone has to point it out: a vast butter-yellow dome with four great wings spreading off it like the arms of a star, dropped into the middle of the city as if from another planet. The locals call it Phsar Thmey the “new market” though it has been here since 1937, built by the French in glorious Art Deco when the spot was still a drained swamp. For years it was said to sit under one of the largest domes in Asia. Step inside and you understand the genius of it: the high ceilings and long horizontal openings keep the whole hall cool and breathing even when the street outside is shimmering with heat. It has earned its nickname as a living art museum.
June 30, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Koh Kong
Phnom Toub Jeang
This is travel the way most Cambodians actually do it. You pack food rather than book a restaurant. You spread a mat in the shade rather than reserve a sun-lounger. You climb a bit for the view, you eat too much grilled meat, the kids run wild, and someone inevitably brings a speaker. There’s no checklist of “things to see” . The whole activity is being there, together, away from the heat and noise of the city. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s the part of Cambodian life that almost never shows up in glossy tourism campaigns.
June 23, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Siem Reap
Pub Street
It is gloriously, unapologetically over the top. Bars stack their signs on top of each other in competing colours, draft beer goes for as little as fifty cents a glass, and clubs spill music into the street where everyone just mingles in the middle. There are fish foot-spas where tiny fish nibble your feet while you laugh nervously, ice-cream rolls clattering on cold plates, and hawkers selling everything from sunglasses to fried tarantulas. Is it touristy? Completely. Is it fun? Also completely. The trick is to lean into it rather than judge it.
June 23, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh Walkstreet
Geographically it’s a special spot: this is roughly where the Tonle Sap meets the Mekong, two of Asia’s great rivers braiding together right in front of you, with the golden spires of the Royal Palace glowing behind. But the magic isn’t really the view, it’s the people. Mass aerobics classes break out on the promenade, a dollar to join, music blasting, grandmothers and office workers bouncing in unison. Kids chase bubbles and fly cheap kites. Couples share fish balls and sugarcane juice. Monks pass in saffron. It’s free, it’s alive, and it’s the best people-watching in the country.
June 23, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Koh Rong
Long Beach
Cambodia’s coastline hides a beach that looks photoshopped. On the western side of Koh Rong, Long Beach unrolls for kilometres of soft white sand against water in three shades of blue — the kind of place foreign travellers fly across the world for, sitting quietly a couple of hours from our own doorstep. It is the antidote to a city week: no traffic, no horns, just the sea doing its thing.
June 15, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Siem Reap
Bayon Temple
If Angkor Wat is the postcard, Bayon is the one that gets under your skin. You walk in expecting a smaller temple and instead you find yourself standing in a forest of stone faces — huge, calm, half-smiling — looking down at you from every direction at once. There is nowhere to stand where you are not being watched, and somehow it doesn’t feel threatening. It feels like the whole building is at peace with you.
June 14, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Siem Reap
Ta Prohm Temple
Some temples impress you with order. Ta Prohm does the opposite it impresses you with surrender. Massive silk-cotton and strangler-fig trees have grown straight out of the rooftops and walls, their roots pouring over the stone like frozen waterfalls, prying the blocks apart one slow millimetre a year. It is the one temple where you can actually see the jungle and the empire arm-wrestling, and for once the building is losing.
June 13, 2026
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KhmerRooms Journal · Siem Reap
Angkor Wat
You have seen it a thousand times before you ever stand in front of it. It’s on the flag. It’s on the beer bottle, the riel note, the back of the school exercise book, the logo of half the businesses in town. Angkor Wat is so woven into being Khmer that it can start to feel like wallpaper — beautiful, familiar, easy to scroll past. And then you go at five in the morning, the sky behind it turns the colour of a ripe mango, those five stone towers appear upside-down in the water at your feet, and you understand why your great-grandparents thought gods had a hand in building it.
June 13, 2026
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