You land at Siem Reap–Angkor International, which opened in 2023 and sits about fifty kilometres east of town, so the transfer takes the better part of an hour. Nothing is scheduled after check-in. The old market quarter is walkable, and if you want a first temple in the cool of the evening we can arrange a car out to Pre Rup, twenty minutes away, at no extra cost.

An early start, in the dark, for Angkor Wat — begun under Suryavarman II in the twelfth century and oriented west, unusually for a Khmer temple. We walk the outer galleries and their eight hundred metres of carved relief before the sun is high. Angkor Thom next, with the face towers of the Bayon, and Ta Prohm in the afternoon, where the clearing was deliberately left unfinished.

Thirty kilometres north to Banteay Srei, consecrated in 967 and cut from pink sandstone so hard that the carving still reads sharply after a thousand years. Preah Khan on the way back — a monastery and university complex that housed thousands. In the late afternoon we drive out to Kampong Phluk on the Tonlé Sap and take a boat between houses raised on eight-metre stilts. Dinner together.

A short flight south, or the road down National Road 6 if the timetable suits the group better; either way we are in the capital for lunch. The afternoon covers the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, its floor laid with five thousand silver tiles, and the National Museum next door, where most of the finest Angkorian sculpture now lives. Evening free on the riverfront.

The morning is given to Tuol Sleng, a school the regime turned into a prison, and to Choeung Ek outside the city. Our guides set out what happened between 1975 and 1979 factually and without dramatisation, and there is time to sit afterwards. The afternoon is lighter: the art deco dome of the Central Market, or the cloth and silver stalls of the Russian Market, as you prefer.

To the station for the Royal Railway service down the southern line — about four and a half hours through Takeo and the rice plain, on refurbished carriages, with the doors open at the halts. Kampot is a small riverside town under the Bokor massif, French-built and mostly two storeys high. We check in, then take a boat out on the tidal river for the last hour of light.

An early visit to a Kampot pepper farm — the vines on their poles, the drying floors, and the difference between green, black and red explained by the people who grow it. Then west along the coast to Sihanoukville port and the speedboat to Koh Rong, forty-five to fifty minutes across. Afternoon on Long Set beach, which runs for several kilometres with almost nothing built on it.

A free day, and the only one on the trip. The walk over the ridge to Sok San takes about ninety minutes through forest; a boat can take you instead. Snorkelling is arranged for anyone who wants it, and the reef off the northern beaches is in better condition than the mainland coast. After dark, the bioluminescent plankton in the shallows is worth a late swim. Farewell dinner on the beach.

The morning boat back to Sihanoukville, then the expressway north to Phnom Penh — around two hours on the new road — and a transfer to Techo International. Flights out of Phnom Penh before mid-afternoon are tight, so we plan around your ticket. Sihanoukville’s own airport is closer if your onward connection uses it, and we will use that instead when it helps.