Cambodia Travel: Is it WORTH IT?! (Our UNFILTERED 1-Month Review)
Heat. Heat. If you plan to travel Southeast Asia, this video could be for you. So, we’ve just done one month in Cambodia, and we want to tell you, was it worth it? I’m H. I’m Phil. And together, we’re H and Phil. So, we’ve been traveling around Southeast Asia for the past 7 months and recently we’ve just done Cambodia and we wanted to give you our honest opinion. Should you add it to your travel list or not? And I think let’s just cut straight into it and answer that question. 100% yes. Add it to that list. Definitely add it to your list. It is incredible. And we’re going to go over some of the reasons now why we think it’s so incredible and why you must visit. So Cambodia is absolutely worth it. And I know there’s been recent border tensions, but they were no problem at all. Please don’t have any fear about them. We got very close up at Batenbang and went further out and we didn’t feel any of the border tensions. How did you feel? Nothing at all. You wouldn’t have known it was going off apart from the media or something that you looked at on your phone. So yeah, don’t worry about that. What do we love about Cambodia? The best thing about Cambodia is the people. They are the friendliest people you will ever meet. And we’ve done obviously Thailand and Vietnam in this visit, in this trip, and worlds above them. They are the kindest, nicest people. They really are. And Cambodia is steeped in so much history and it’s beautiful. Some incredible islands. So on this journey, let’s jump straight in. We started at um Ponumpen. uh the capital of Cambodia and we stayed there for five nights. Was five nights too long? Five nights was too long. Yes, we’re doing low and low and slow travel, but it was still too long for us. So, I would recommend one or two nights there just to get a feel for it. How about you? Yeah, one or two would be enough. Definitely in there. And then travel onwards. We went down to um I apologize my pronunciation of this is going to be awful. Uh Sanukavville and we stayed there for one night. And why did we do that? We stayed there ready to go to Kong Salomon in the morning. Um just in case the weather, we were in offseason so in case the weather was bad, the boat any issues, there wasn’t any. A lot of people just travel down and get on the boat straight away. So, and how did you feel about Shinookville? Oh, it was a random place. It was very eerie, wasn’t it? It was because you’ve got buildings, hundreds of them, left like in this desolate stage of just being a shell and they’re everywhere across the city. No matter where you go, you will see these huge skyrises and they’re just they’re just very odd, aren’t they? Yeah, really odd. And you got people that are sort of camping out in them and it just feels very very strange. A bit strange. Not the nicest city. Anyway, we then caught the boat. didn’t we? Yes. Which was exciting. It was. Yeah. How long was the boat trip? It took about 45 minutes in total and it was smooth as anything. And boat trip cost $12.50. We used a company called GTVC. Very, very good company. Got premium boats. Absolutely brilliant. Really good. We jumped on over to our island. How many people were on it? Hardly any. It was absolutely Okay. How many tourists were on it? Oh, I think we were the only ones. We were the only ones. Yeah. And the boat going over to K. Oh my god, that was jam-packed full of backpackers and everything. And we know when we did our research that that was more of the party island. So I think we were pleased with our decision. We did. And we chose an island just based. We wanted a little bit of quiet relaxation time. And that’s why we chose Kong San Lom, the smaller of the two islands just off the coast of Cambodia. So we got over to the island and we were staying at Pearl Beach Resort. That’s right. And it is a stunning resort. We got incredibly lucky for what reason? Uh because no one was there. Absolutely no one. It felt like a millionaire’s island. You could sit around the pool and there was no one there. There was a couple of other families but they came and left sort of as we were there. Yeah, it was stunning. And even a couple of days we had bad weather, but it was still beautiful. Absolutely just incredible. We got so so lucky by staying there. And yeah, we had five nights there. Was five nights too long? No, definitely not. I wanted to stay longer. It was just total relaxation. So, if you like relaxing and literally nothing to do, then Yes. Yeah. If you need a little bit more. I mean, there was kayaks and everything that you could take out free of charge. There was paddle boards, so there was still things to do. Yeah, it was absolutely stunning. Beautiful. Incredible. There was two solid days of full rain where it was difficult to even leave the room and because there is only sort of a bar and a restaurant there. There really wasn’t that much to do at that point. Again, the place where we chose Pearl Beach Resort, it’s quite far away from anywhere else. So, it’s 7 km walking distance away from kind of the main main beach down there. Because of the rains that they’d had over there, they told us not to use the the path to go and get. It’s not even really a path, is it? So, no, it’s just a track and a very very basic track at that. There is a few other bits around there to go and see and do. Yeah, we did go venture out for a walk and we ventured down. There’s like a little um shop. No, you can’t really call it a shop, someone’s house. So, we got some water and things from there. And there’s another little restaurant there. I think because we were in off season, they weren’t at their full capacity cuz normally they have barbecue nights and everything. That was like a 5minute walk, wasn’t it? No. Yeah. And really, really cheap as well. Yeah. Really the noodles there. Yeah. It was like 23 pound to share some noodles and actually at the five-star resort as well. It was around about $67 per dish. The food was incredible. It was more expensive cuz you’re over there, but saying that it was worth it. You don’t mind paying if it’s worth it. And we got breakfast included as well, didn’t we? We did. And we got the first couple of days we got buffet breakfast cuz there’s a few more of us, but then they did alocart breakfast and it was it was beautiful. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic. Incredible. So, we loved our time there. We then caught the boat back. The ferry was It was a larger boat because the seas that day, they were a lot rougher. They had to send a bigger boat which held about 30 people. Still a beautiful boat that they sent though. But we had to go over to they stopped at us first. Then they went over to Kong to go and pick everyone up and then came back to the island. Took a little bit longer. Took about an hour and 20 to get back. But even though we were a little bit scared, weren’t we getting on the boat that it was a bit rough out there and we’re like, “Oh god, it’s going to be awful.” But actually, it was fine, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was. It was a lot rougher. But it was absolutely fine. So, we then did stay another night in Sinukville, which wasn’t needed, was it? No, it wasn’t needed. We could have got back on a bus and straight back up to Fenon Pen, but obviously you wanted to make sure we were all safe. We We didn’t want to miss anything. I did. I did. So, but all the boats and everything get in, don’t they? Like pretty early. They do. So, and the buses know that you’re getting off a boat, so they with you to sort it out. So, it’s absolutely fine. Yeah. We then uh caught a a bus uh which was $6 each back up to Ponen. We stayed another few nights up there. One of the things that we then did was the Killing Fields, which wow. It’s something that you don’t want to do, but you do want to do at the same time. It’s very, very emotional. Um, you’ve got to be in the right headsp space for it. It’s important to do to understand the Cambodian people and what they went through. And to have all these then really happy, nice people inviting people after what they’ve gone through as a country is is incredible. It is absolutely just very very moving. I cried multiple times on the way round. One of the things that I would really recommend is getting the headset, the audio headset. I think that that really brought things home to what happened and the way that the story is told. It’s very moving. I would allow two three hours and just go and take in what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing around the place. One of the things that I did find though that it was quite a small area where it says killing fields. In my mind, I thought it was going to be this vast area to go and walk around. It is a couple of acres, isn’t it? Yeah, but I mean when we went as well, it was quite really quiet and I think that that I we needed that. I wouldn’t have liked it if it was busy, but it was beautiful. It was a nice lake that you could sit around and process things and I think it was very well done. Um, but it is a must. Definitely. Absolutely is a must. So, we of course did our mall excursions as we always do. We love them. One of the things that I think we love the most about this particular mall is obviously getting our steps in because we enjoy that. But we found the $1 sandwich, didn’t we? Oh, yeah. So it’s an AON mall and AON mall will have such vast variety of food that you can sit in and eat. They do a tuna sandwich. This doesn’t have cucumber on it. I think tuna and cucumber sandwich and it’s $1 and it’s the best. It feels like being back at home in the UK. It’s really really really good and definitely very very much value. So we enjoyed that. They’ve got an entire section actually at the mall. If you go into the supermarket part, an entire food section where you sit down, eat, choose what you need and want to eat and everything is extremely well priced in there. Pricing. Let’s just talk about Cambodia and how we felt when we first arrived. So, when we first arrived in Panon Pan, we were like, “Oh my god, this place is so expensive. Like, we’re not going to be able to eat much. We’re budgeting, etc.” But then when you start delving into it a little bit more, it becomes cheaper, doesn’t it? It does. But I think you’ve got to you’ve got to cut through what you’re seeing on the face of things, the first things that you get to see and you’ve got to uncover, you know, search a bit harder on Grab, for example. You know, we we spent some time and we got, as an example, like a bacon and egg sandwich in the morning. We were paying $3 to start with, but a little bit harder searching and it ended up we get a better bacon sandwich and it ended up costing $2 in the morning. So, yeah. Yeah, the other thing is obviously you just said that so I’m going against what you’ve just said is looking at the western restaurant that’s where you’re spending the money and Cambodia has a lot in the capital of western restaurant. So if you go and look outside like we did that first night and ate local at a barbecue it was so cheap. So you just got to think about it a little bit. Yeah, you absolutely do with what you’re doing. But we in the end once we got round to like especially Batam Bonga CMR prices dropped drastically and it’s so much cheaper and very very comparable with you know Vietnam, Thailand etc. So yeah, I think also an issue there is the the currency that you have because you’ve got the dollar because you’ve got the Cambodian reel and because you’re coming from another country, normally your mind is so much processing all this different currency that’s going on, especially when you’re on the streets and some of them want dollars, some of them want reals, and then you give them dollars and you get real back. So you really have to try and check it as well. I mean, I just left it to Phil. I just didn’t get involved in this. So we uh then caught the bus and we traveled up to uh Batenbong and uh absolutely loved the place. So we paid for um a hotel there on the more expensive side uh but we feel that we got one of the best hotels in the town. We paid about £29 per night. And uh the hotel unfortunately wasn’t amazing. But Batam Bang itself was incredible. And and to be fair, we weren’t in the hotel much anyway. We weren’t. No. So, one of the things to uh to go and do is hire a tuk tuk driver. And I tell you what, we can put the name of this guy in the comments and his phone number because he was incredible. We went off. We didn’t really know what to expect. I did book it through get your guide, didn’t I? And I didn’t know what to expect. It was Phil’s birthday, so we need to do something a bit special. So, he took me to all these places. But my god, we were out all day with him. Yeah, he was absolutely incredible. It cost us $24 for the entire day for both of us. There was meant to be four people actually in the tucked up because it’s not very busy at the moment. It was just us and it was the most magical day. So, give us some things that we did. So, uh, we started off, he told us a bit of the history and stories of Baton Bong itself. Then we went off and we did the bamboo train, which is a must. It’s just great fun. Like, you’re never going to get to do that again in your life. Absolutely not. I think if there’s one thing that you go and do in Cambodia, you’ve got to do you’ve got to go and do the trade. It’s just It’s just too cool for school. It just feels I mean it is just you’re sitting on some railway tracks but it’s just awesome. But the scenery as well was really really pretty as well. So you get to think about it. Then we went off and it took us through the countryside. We stopped by local villages fishing, harvesting. It was it was really good to see meet all the children, didn’t we, in the local villages. The children are so nice. So friendly and they just like to say hello and a high five and they’re so happy for the One of the weirdest things that we actually saw was a tattooed dog, which we looked it up on AI and it does say that that part of the region they do tattoo dogs over there. However, our tuk tuk driver had never seen one himself. He’d heard about them but never seen one. So, bizarre. It was a very bizarre thing to see. But yeah, then traveled around the countryside. One of the things that we love was the mini combine harvesters and um they were just so cute, weren’t they? Yeah. It’s obviously a new thing now in Cambodia because obviously they’ve always done it by hand, haven’t they? And um yeah, off they go. They’re the tiniest little thing for the rice fields and they’re just so cute. Bright pink one. What a lovely thing. Anyway, so we travel around saw the hanging bridge and again just beautiful. And we finished the day off with the killing caves. No, but what did we do before the killing caves? We stopped on the side of the road. We did. My goodness. Yeah, that was a uh that was a powerful moment eating some rat. I wasn’t going to try any and I don’t know why I did cuz I felt very sick after it was let me just tell you tastes like chicken. Okay. And these rats, they only get them twice a year because when they cut the rice down in the fields, they’re all there. They basically live on lotus flowers and rice and things like that. So, it’s not like a rat running around the city, but it’s just the thought of it. Yeah. Okay. So then we went on we did the killing caves which is again not quite as emotional as your ponumpen emotion. There’s no headset that we could find to go and use but our guide gave us told us a lot and it was very very powerful and it was still yeah really good to see still worth doing. You can get a car up to the caves up to there. Um we walked. It’s a real good walk though up there and back down especially in the humidity. Then what did we do? And then we watched all of the bats come out the cave at dusk. Millions upon millions upon it just goes on and on and on. I mean it was going dark by the point that we left and they were still just coming out. It was Yeah. Again, a real thing that you should definitely go and see. And this is why putting that bat and bang on that list is an absolute. If you’re doing Cambodia, you’ve definitely got to go. You have to. Uh then we caught the bus down to see Reek. What happened with our bus journey? We get so lucky on buses. This is the one. Well, we’ve had a couple. This was our private one, wasn’t it? Private. A 20seater bus. Just me and Phil all the way. It was perfect. Seats yourselves done. So, it was really good. Absolutely amazing. Really quick travel down there. It’s only about 3 hours down to Creep and Sem Reap. What do you think? Straight off. Oh, love it. Just Yeah. Amazing place. Absolutely loved Sem Reap. Yeah, we stayed there for seven nights. Was seven nights too long? No. No. No. We could have stayed there for a month. Stayed there for a month. It was so nice. And again, we weren’t at peak time, so it was nice and quiet, wasn’t it? But it was just lovely. It was just all around it was just everywhere that we went, we just felt comfortable. We felt like we we didn’t matter where we were walking, what time of night, everything felt so safe. What was the special part? Where did we go? We went to a beautiful hotel called the Karma Resort which we got for free. We did. Yeah. If you watch our other videos, we went down to Bali. Um we got hassled to go on this trip and they ended up they gave us a uh a free hotel which comes from a hotel stay for a week which we took. I will say Karma isn’t for us but anybody out there that either has come or is looking into it, it definitely works for some people. Yeah, it’s a Yeah, it was a stunning hotel. We were very lucky to spend the week there. Yeah, absolutely incredible. What else did we do? We went to Anchor Watt. Wow. It’s a must do and it’s a mustsee. I mean, you cannot This is one of the wonders of the world and it is a must do. A mustsee. It is generally just incredible, isn’t it? But we will say we got up very early for sunrise, but it had been raining the night before, so there was no sunrise. It was very cloudy. And a tip is if it’s raining the night before, you’re not going to get a sunrise. So, don’t get up early like us. Yeah. So, a definite tip there is do not go and do it at sunrise if it’s not going if there going to be no sunrise. It’s going to be cloudy because you’re not going to get anything. You’re not going to see anything. It’s not going to be worth it and you’re going to be very tired for the day. We ended up doing two temples, didn’t we? So, at the anchor, which we walked 10k around there just alone. But we because we were so early, it was so quiet. There’s hardly anyone there. There wasn’t. So, we were lucky in that way. And then we just we went to go and do uh the Tomb Raider temple. That was just crazy. It was beautiful. It was that is again a mustdo. An absolute must. It’s just I think the just the trees coming out of the temple. Wo. Mindblowing how big they are and how big the roots are growing over everything. Yeah. So and we didn’t go on to do any more temples. I think we underestimated how hot it was, how tired we were. So we would like to go back and do some more of the smaller ones. Yeah, I think in one day if you manage to do more than four temples, I think that’ became over them. So incredible, incredible experience and we want to go back and we hope that we will be able to get to go back to go and do more of that and Cambodia. Yeah, absolutely. So, a great tip for you, and I hope this is helpful, is with the tuk tuk driver that you can hire, um, which does cost about £25 for you for the whole Ankor and the Temple experience. If I’m all honest with you, I wouldn’t do that. We had a tuk tuk driver and he didn’t add any value to our day at all. And it was quite a mission to find him and got out an he was fast asleep in the back of his car and wasn’t waking up for anyone. So, I’d just get a grab unlet and I mean um the other tip is when you go into Ankorwatt, there’s a lot of guides in there as well that want to take you around that I mean that is totally up to you, but price-wise they are going to charge you above and beyond because it’s on the day and again I just don’t think you need it. I think you’re getting the splendor of what’s there and what’s on offer without having any of these guides getting a grab just straight direct to your destination. The other thing with the tuk tuk driver is unfortunately he took us to a restaurant that we didn’t want to go to and it was extremely expensive. It ended up costing us £12 and we ended up felt like we had to buy him a meal which then cost he ordered the most expensive thing on there which was another £7 which we don’t think he even ate. We think he just got the money for It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine cuz they’re all making money. We get that. But yeah, just a tip. Don’t bother getting the tuk tuks. We really didn’t feel like they added value. And that was as well. I booked that through get your guide after having such a great guide in the other in Batenbong. We were like, “Oh yeah, it’s going to be amazing.” It really wasn’t. So yeah. So this just um finish up with just to say Cambodia should be absolutely on your list. It what an incredible place. It’s just for us, it’s just been filled with memories. You’ve got the people that are just the nicest in Asia. Everyone’s happy and smiling no matter what. It’s such a a contrast between sort of um that smiling hospitality, the beautiful serene islands that you’ve got, the ancient sort of stonework that’s there, and I suppose it’s somewhere that just put on your list 100%. Also, if you’ve got any questions about uh tuk tuk drivers, trips that we took, hotels, anything, if you drop us a comment, then we’ll get back to you with any information that you you need. So, yeah. Thank you so much for watching. This is Phil and I’m H signing out. Bye wash.
Have you ever wondered if Cambodia should be on your Southeast Asia travel list? 🤔 After spending one incredible month exploring this beautiful country, we’re here to give you our UNFILTERED, honest opinion!
We’ve covered everything from the bustling streets of Phnom Penh to the serene islands of Koh Rong Sanloem, the historical depth of the Killing Fields, the unique charm of Battambang (hello, Bamboo Train! 🚂), and of course, the majestic Angkor Wat in Siem Reap.
Spoiler Alert: Yes, it is 100% worth adding to your travel plans! 🇰🇭✨ But like any journey, there are things you MUST know before you go.
In this video, we share:
❤️ Why the Cambodian people are the friendliest you’ll ever meet!
⚠️ Our honest take on Sihanoukville (and why you might want to skip it!)
🏝️ Finding paradise on Koh Rong Sanloem (a true hidden gem!)
🙏 Visiting the poignant Killing Fields and Killing Caves (essential experiences for understanding Cambodia’s history).
🚂 Riding the iconic Bamboo Train in Battambang.
🦇 Witnessing millions of bats emerge from caves at dusk.
🌟 Tips for visiting Angkor Wat – what to do, what to avoid, and sunrise hacks!
💵 Navigating currency (USD vs. Riel) and finding amazing, affordable food.
Whether you’re planning your first trip to Southeast Asia or looking for your next adventure, this comprehensive guide will help you decide if Cambodia is for you.
Got questions about specific hotels, tours, or travel tips? Drop them in the comments below! 👇 We’d love to help you plan your dream Cambodian adventure.
If you found this video helpful, please give it a LIKE 👍 and SUBSCRIBE for more honest travel reviews and adventures across Southeast Asia! Hit the notification bell 🔔 so you don’t miss our next video.
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