Countryside and Villages in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Ten minutes past the last hotel on the Airport Road the tarmac gives out and Siem Reap turns into farmland: flooded paddies in the wet months, dust and stubble in the dry ones, sugar palms standing alone at the field edges, and wooden houses raised on stilts with hammocks slung underneath. It is worth half a day on its own. West toward Puok there are silk weavers and lotus ponds; south on the Tonlé Sap the villages sit entirely on stilts, and the ground beneath the houses is under water for months at a time.
Where the farmland starts
The lanes between the Airport Road and Puok, roughly 10 to 16 km west, are the easiest countryside to reach — rice fields, palm-sugar makers and the Angkor Silk Farm, which runs free workshops and a shuttle from town. South-east, Kampong Phluk at about 30 km and Kampong Khleang at about 50 km are the Tonlé Sap stilt villages; Khleang is much the larger and receives a fraction of the visitors. North on the Banteay Srei road, roadside stalls sell palm sugar and kralan, sticky rice roasted in bamboo. The Roluos villages, 13 km east, mix ninth-century brick temples with ordinary working hamlets.
How to see it well
Go by bicycle or tuk-tuk rather than a coach — the lanes are narrow and the whole point is being able to stop. Several community-based operators in town run half-day village visits with a local guide, which is the difference between watching and understanding; ask whether the fee reaches the village directly. Water level shapes the lake trips: from roughly August to December the flooded forest is navigable and the stilt houses stand well clear of the surface, while by April boats are limited to the main channels. On the lake trips the boats pass within a few metres of open kitchens and front rooms, so ask before photographing into houses, and carry small riel notes for stalls that cannot change dollars.