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 · 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 · 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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