Angkor Wat Tours from Siem Reap

The Sunrise Days Side by Side

These are the small-group and group-seat days, at sunrise or with a late start. The table shows the listing price, the total once the pass the listing names is added, the pickup hour and how you travel. Prices come from the tour listings and the pass from the official Angkor Enterprise price of $37 for one day, except where a listing names the three-day pass at $62.

How a Sunrise Day Runs

The pickup lands in your hotel lobby in the dark. The listings start between 4:15 and 4:45 AM, while the lowest price of the group, the Full-Day Tour with Sunset, starts instead around 9:10 AM for a sunset finish. Vehicles stop at the ticket office on the way so you can buy the Angkor Pass, and some operators suggest buying it online the day before to save the queue.

At Angkor Wat you wait at the reflecting pond facing the west side of the temple while the sky lightens. The sun rises between about 5:36 am and 6:31 am in Siem Reap across the year, so the wait changes with the season. After the sunrise the day moves to the Bayon in Angkor Thom and the tree-strangled towers of Ta Prohm, with Angkor Thom's gates and terraces between them. The Highlights Sunrise Tour is back at your hotel between 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM, and the Vespa day returns around 2:00 PM.

The Angkor Temples Park opens at 5:00 AM and closes at 6:30 PM on all three passes, which gives the late-start days room to finish at dusk.

What Separates These Tours

Read the small print, because the titles do not tell the whole story. The Small-Group Sunrise Tour is one listing that sells sunrise or sunset, so pick the sunrise option when booking. The Full-Day Tour with Sunset is not a sunrise tour at all: it starts around 9:10 AM and ends with sunset at Phnom Bakheng, where no climbing is allowed after 17:30 and the hike to the top takes about half an hour. The Sunrise Tour by Vespa or Tuk-Tuk lets you choose Vespa, tuk-tuk, SUV or jeep, and its tuk-tuk-only option has no guide inside the temples, which changes the day. The Private Angkor Sunrise Tour is titled private but also sells a Group Tour option that runs 5 hours instead of 7, and Viator collects $62 at checkout, the price of the three-day pass, so confirm which pass you need for a one-day visit before paying. Cover knees and shoulders in all the temples.

Check details with the operator where a listing contradicts itself.

The Private Options Side by Side

The table compares the catalog prices from Siem Reap, who is guiding inside the temples, and the total each listing says you pay once the Angkor Pass is added. Prices are per person unless the tour says per group. None of them includes the pass, which costs $37 for one day on the official Angkor Enterprise site.

Why Go Private

Privacy buys you timing. The Private Angkor Wat Ta Prohm Angkor Thom Tour offers a sunrise pickup at around 4:45 AM or a normal start from 9:00 AM if you skip the dawn, in a private SUV with 4 to 5 hours of guiding. The Angkor Wat Private Tuk-Tuk Tour is the most reviewed private option here, 2,854 reviews at 4.9, and it costs $20 per group of up to 3, but the price buys a driver, not a guide. The listing says the English-speaking driver does not guide inside the temples, so pick a booking option with a guide if you want the history explained. The Private Angkor Temple Highlights Tour is the opposite: $31 per person for a 7-hour day with an expert guide and driver, covering Angkor Wat, the Bayon, Baphuon, the Terraces and Ta Prohm. The Angkor Wat Sunrise Private Tour runs 8 hours in an air-conditioned vehicle from the sunrise to Banteay Kdei.

A Tuk-tuk on Your Own Against a Private Tour

You can hire a tuk-tuk without any tour. Wikivoyage Angkor lists about $15 for the main temples and $20 to $30 for outlying temples, with sunrise adding about $3, and its Siem Reap page lists a full day at about $20. Nomadic Matt puts a day of tuk-tuk hire at about $25 with room for 3 or 4 people.

A licensed guide costs about $20 a day on top, per Wikivoyage. What the tour adds is the fixed price, the free cancellation and someone who has planned the route, the sunrise entry and the ticket stop for you.

The Multi-day Options Compared

The table lists the multi-day tours with their catalog price, length, what they add beyond the first-day highlights, and the Angkor Pass each one implies. None of them includes the pass in the listed price.

Why More Than One Day

The temples sit on two circular routes. The Small Circuit starts at Angkor Wat and runs through Angkor Thom's South Gate, the Bayon, the Terraces, Ta Prohm and Banteay Kdei. The Grand Circuit turns east from the Bayon to Pre Rup, the East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Pean and Preah Khan, and costs more by tuk-tuk or car because of the distance.

The three-day Angkor Pass at $62 stays valid for 7 days, so the three visit days must fall inside one week. The Angkor Wat 2-Day Tour splits the two circuits cleanly, 5,120 reviews at 4.9: day 1 is the small tour with the sunrise, ending by 12:45 PM, day 2 the big tour with the Phnom Bakheng sunset, ending by 7:00 PM, at $34 per person before the pass. The Angkor Wat and Floating Village 2-Day Tour swaps the circuits for variety, Beng Mealea and a private boat at Kampong Phluk on day 2, priced at $235 per group. The Angkor Wat 3-Day Tour goes furthest, three private days with a licensed guide reaching Banteay Srei and Beng Mealea, $303.75 once the $62 pass is added at checkout.

What the Price Leaves Out

Read the exclusions before you book a multi-day tour. On the 2-day tour, meals and the temple pass are not included, and the listing does not say which pass the two days need, so plan for the $62 three-day pass. On the floating village tour, meals, entrance fees and the admission and private boat ride to Tonle Sap and Kampong Phluk are excluded, and Viator shows $69 of extra charges without a breakdown, so ask the operator what it covers.

On the 3-day tour, meals and admission are excluded, Viator adds the $62 three-day pass per person, and lunch at a local restaurant starts at about $5 a dish.

Bikes and the Outer Temples Compared

The table lists the cycling tours and the day trip beyond the main circuit, with their catalog price, how far you ride or drive, and which extra tickets come on top of the tour price.

The Bike Tours

The Angkor Temples Bike Tour is a 30 km full-day ride in a small group with a cycling guide, mountain bike, helmet and vehicle support, from $33 per person. One detail conflicts inside the listing: the Includes list says hotel pickup, while the meeting point is Gingold coffee in Krong Siem Reap, so confirm which applies when you book. The Angkor Sunrise Cycling Tour turns the sunrise into a ride: hotel pickup between 4:30 and 4:40 AM, the sunrise at Angkor Wat, then 15 to 25 km of easy backroads riding to Ta Prohm and the Bayon with a support van behind. It needs a minimum of 2 adults per booking, and the operator cancels for bad weather and offers a different date or a full refund.

Both rides happen in real heat: Siem Reap averages a high of 35.8 C in April, and its record high is 41.2 C. Start early, carry water and ride in the covered-shoulders dress the temples require.

Koh Ker and Beng Mealea

The outer temples are a full day out. Beng Mealea sits about 80 km east of Siem Reap, about 1.5 hours by car, and Koh Ker about 120 km away, roughly 2.5 hours. Koh Ker's seven-tier pyramid, begun by Jayavarman IV in 928 AD, is 36 m high, and Koh Ker was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.

Both areas sell their own tickets on the official site: a 1-day Koh Ker pass at $15 and a separate 1-day Beng Mealea pass at $10. Wikivoyage warns land mines are a danger at Koh Ker, so do not enter forest outside the cleared zones. On the Koh Ker and Beng Mealea Temples Tour the ticket picture is unclear: the Includes list shows the Koh Ker fee at $15 and the Beng Mealea entrance fee with a note that an Angkor Wat ticket is required, without saying who pays.

The itinerary stops list only Beng Mealea and a local cafe, with Thom Temple as an optional extra, so confirm the Koh Ker visit with the operator before booking.

Official Prices and Extras

The Angkor Pass is the big extra on almost every tour, and the official ticket site is ticket.angkorenterprise.gov.kh. The table gathers the official ticket prices, the child rule, the visa and the airport transfer costs.

How the Catalog Prices Work

Each tour shows a from price, the lowest booking option, and it is per person unless the listing says per group. What separates a $14 day from a $75 one is who is guiding and how you travel. On Viator listings the platform adds the Angkor Pass at checkout, so the Angkor Sunrise Tour by Vespa or Tuk Tuk at $39 becomes $76 once the $37 pass is added.

On GetYourGuide listings you buy the pass yourself, online or with the guide on the day. The cheapest total with the pass is the $51 you pay on the Angkor Wat Full-Day Tour with Sunset, $14 plus $37. The dearest single-day total is the $112 you pay on the Private Angkor Wat Ta Prohm Angkor Thom Tour, $75 plus $37, the price of privacy, a car and a guide.

Buying the Angkor Pass

Buy the pass online at ticket.angkorenterprise.gov.kh or through the official app, or at the APSARA ticket office just off the highway from Siem Reap. Your photo is printed on the pass and it is checked at almost all sites, so it cannot be shared. A pass bought after 17:00 counts from the next day, so the evening entry does not use up a day, per Wikivoyage.

Payment is by card, US dollars or riel, and Wikivoyage says the riel rate is unfavourable. One conflict matters for outer-temple plans: the official site sells Beng Mealea as a separate $10 ticket, while Wikivoyage says Beng Mealea is included in the Angkor Pass. Go with the official site and plan for the $10.

One, Two or Three Days

The official Angkor Enterprise pass costs $37 for one day, $62 for three days used within 7 days and $72 for seven days used within 30 days. Your photo is printed on the pass and it is checked at almost all sites, so it cannot be shared. The table matches each length to the route most tours follow and the tours on this page that run it.

Is 1 Day Enough for Angkor Wat

One day covers the Small Circuit: Angkor Wat at sunrise, then the Bayon and Angkor Thom, then Ta Prohm, with times on site of roughly 1 to 3 hours each on the guided tours. It leaves out the Grand Circuit temples such as Pre Rup, Ta Som, Neak Pean and Preah Khan, and anything beyond the park like Banteay Srei, Beng Mealea or the Tonle Sap villages. For a first visit it is enough to see the highlights.

The one-day pass costs $37 per person and the two-day tour needs the 3-day pass at $62, so a second day of temples costs only $25 more in pass money. Children under 12 enter free with their passport.

The Circuits, the Crowd Trick and the Religion Question

The Small Circuit starts at Angkor Wat and runs through the South Gate of Angkor Thom, the Bayon, the Terraces, Ta Prohm and Banteay Kdei. The Grand Circuit starts the same way, then turns east to Pre Rup, the East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Pean and Preah Khan, and costs more by tuk-tuk, bus or car because of the distance. Visit-angkor.org notes that going round the Small Circuit counterclockwise after sunrise, starting at Ta Prohm, avoids the main tourist stream, which is busiest at Ta Prohm.

On history: Angkor Wat was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu when built under Suryavarman II from the early 12th century, and it became a Theravada Buddhist site from the late 13th century, so the answer is both, in sequence. See the pass and cost section for what each tour price leaves out.

Same Temples, Different Logistics

The figures below come from Wikivoyage, the official airport pages and the tour listings. The pass price is the same either way: $37 for one day, bought on the official site or at the ticket office. What changes is the transport in the park, the guiding and how early you have to organise the sunrise.

When Each Makes Sense

Going alone suits travelers staying several days who already have a hotel, can pay $15 to $25 for a tuk-tuk day and want to set their own pace, adding about $20 for a licensed guide if wanted. That can undercut the cheapest tours, which run $14 to $39 per person before the $37 pass, though not always once you add guiding. A tour makes sense for the sunrise, because pickups between 4:15 and 4:45 AM, a guide inside the temples and, on the highlights sunrise tour, the quieter eastern entrance at Angkor Wat are all handled for you.

Solo travelers and couples also save on private day rates by joining a small group capped at 8 to 15 people. If you want a private day with everything arranged, the private temple highlights tour runs 7 hours at $31 per person plus the pass.

Which Months Work Best

Wikivoyage puts the peak season at November to February with temperatures of 25 to 30 C, March to May as the hottest stretch reaching 40 C, and June to October as the rainy season. Sunrise in Siem Reap ranges from 5:37 am in June to 6:31 am in January, which is why sunrise tours pick up between 4:15 and 4:45 AM year round. The wettest month is September.

Heat, Hours and the Dress Code

No month in Siem Reap averages below a 30 C high, and the record is 41.2 C, so carry water on any tour and take the midday breaks the itineraries build in. The park opens at 5:00 AM and closes at 6:30 PM on all three Angkor passes. The dress code asks for covered shoulders and long trousers or a long skirt, a scarf over bare shoulders is not accepted, and the bare-shoulder ban has been strictly enforced on Angkor Wat's uppermost level.

Only the wooden eastern steps with a handrail lead to the third tier, and the other stairways are closed. Several tours list cold water and cold towels in the price.

The Border Advice and Where the Tours Go

The FCDO advises against all but essential travel to within 20 km of the Cambodia-Thailand land border, where there was heavy fighting in 2025. It says land crossings remain suspended and border temples including Preah Vihear are closed. The tours on this page stay in the Angkor park, at Banteay Srei, Beng Mealea and Koh Ker, none of which is in that border zone.

The FCDO also notes unexploded ordnance including landmines in remote areas, often unmarked, so stay on main routes and marked paths around temple complexes, which applies at forested sites like Beng Mealea and Koh Ker. In town, the FCDO advises tuk-tuks with metal grills on the sides, which give some protection against bag snatching by motorbike thieves, and says travel after dark significantly increases accident risk.