Cambodia has a unique and ancient food culture all its own, and unlike Thai and Vietnamese it's probably fairly difficult to find a bowl of it in your local neighbourhod. Using pepper rather than chilli to add spice, Cambodian cuisine is laden with fresh herbs, spices, rice, freshwater fish and condiments. And while there are influences from French and Thai styles, Cambodian food has a distinct style and flavour that's best experienced while seated at a local beer hall or family home. While travelling from Phnom Penh through to Siem Reap, discover the sights, sounds and flavours of Kampot, Battambang, Banteay Chhmar and Angkor Wat, and marvel at a cuisine, culture and population so special that you will very quickly be won over for life.Highlights
Go market to table during an immersive cooking class with a local chef in Phnom Penh
Get an insight into Cambodian cuisine with a visit to famous pepper plantations outside of Kampot, and taste the best pepper in the world
A homestay in the village of Banteay Chhmar puts you right in the heart of rural life in Cambodia
Eat for a cause with dinner at a Phnom Penh restaurant that not only serves delicious modern Cambodian cooking, but helps the local youth too
Learn about local crab and have it cooked up fresh while you look out across the Gulf of Thailand at the Kep Crab market
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Siem Reap
Siem Reap is the capital city of Siem Reap Province in northwestern Cambodia, and a popular resort town as the gateway to Angkor region. Siem Reap has colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter, and around the Old Market. In the city, there are museums, traditional Apsara dance performances, a Cambodian cultural village, souvenir and handycraft shops, silk farms, rice-paddies in the countryside, fishing villages and a bird sanctuary near the Tonle Sap Lake. Siem Reap today, being a popular tourist destination, has a large number of hotels, resorts, restaurants and businesses closely related to tourism. This is much owed to its proximity to the Angkor temples, the most popular tourist attraction in Cambodia.
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Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, the city has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic activities. The city has grown to become the industrial, commercial, cultural, tourist and historical center of Cambodia. Once known as the “Pearl of Asia”, it was considered one of the loveliest French-built cities in Indochina in the 1920s. Phnom Penh, along with Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, are significant global and domestic tourist destinations for Cambodia.