Cafe Crawl
KhmerRooms Café Crawl - 5 spots a week
Playful, tropical drinks-first café famous for its Phnom Penh Coconut Coffee and smooth matcha latte.
Bright, colourful, and endlessly photogenic, perfect for a refreshing pick-me-up between sightseeing stops.
A cosy, unpretentious neighbourhood spot ideal for a slow breakfast or a quiet hour with your laptop.
The kind of low-key local hideaway that makes wandering Phnom Penh's side streets worthwhile.
A Japanese-inspired garden café in Sen Sok with lush scenery, a fish pond, and genuinely good food.
Order the coconut ice blocks and settle in. it's as much an experience as a coffee stop.
A serene, Japanese-inspired café on a leafy Toul Kork street, built for calm, unhurried mornings.
Soft light and quiet vibes make it perfect for reading, journalling, or simply slowing down.
A minimalist specialty café in Doun Penh where precise pour-overs and dark-roast Americanos take centre stage.
Clean, calm, and coffee-focused. the pick for purists (with excellent matcha for everyone else).
More from the Journal
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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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 · 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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