Visas and entry
Cambodia’s e-visa costs USD 30, a price reduced from USD 36 as of 1 January 2025, and it must be used to enter within 3 months of the date it was issued; once you are in the country it allows a stay of up to 30 days. Visa on arrival is available at most international airports and a good number of land and river border posts, priced around USD 30, and requires a passport-style photo measuring 4 by 6 cm, so bring one with you rather than hunting for a photo booth at the border.
Your passport should have at least six months of validity left beyond your planned return date, with a couple of blank pages free for stamps, and it helps to be able to show an onward ticket if asked.
The Tinh Bien–Phnom Den land crossing keeps its own hours: 7:00 to 20:00 on the Vietnamese side, 8:00 to 20:00 on the Cambodian side, with customs processing itself running only 8:00 to 17:00. Arrive well inside that window rather than right at the edges of it.
Payment
A deposit locks in your dates and lets us secure hotels, vehicles and guides on your behalf, with the balance falling due a set number of days ahead of arrival. How that splits depends on the season and which hotels or activities sit inside your itinerary, since some suppliers want payment further out than others. Your written quote spells out the precise figures for your own trip rather than one rule fitting every booking.
Cancellation
A cancellation made well ahead of arrival costs little or nothing; one made close to your travel dates can mean forfeiting most or all of what has already gone toward rooms, guides and vehicles booked on your behalf. Roughly speaking: 45 days or further out carries no charge, inside that but still 30 days away brings a quarter of the trip price, tightening to 15 days pushes that to half, down to 10 days raises it to three-quarters, and anything closer than 10 days means the full amount is owed. Individual hotel policies or peak-season blackout dates can override this scale, and your quote will flag it clearly wherever that applies.
Cambodian etiquette
Angkor still functions as an active place of worship alongside being a heritage site, so keep shoulders and knees covered wherever you climb up into Angkor Wat’s upper levels or step into a working temple hall. Physical contact with a monk is off limits, particularly for women, and clambering onto carvings or ruins for a photo is not acceptable, no matter how good the angle looks. Ask permission before pointing a camera at anyone, and steer well clear of buying antiques, coins or stone fragments sold near temple sites; carrying them out of Cambodia is against the law regardless of what a vendor claims.
Keep a stack of small-value dollar bills on hand, since USD gets used everywhere alongside the riel and your change tends to arrive in riel rather than more dollars. Bills that are torn or badly worn get turned away by drivers, shops and market stalls with some regularity, so look over your notes at the bank or airport counter rather than discovering the problem later.
Good to know
Your Angkor Pass has your photo printed on it, and every gate on the route checks it against your face, so it needs to travel with you rather than sit in a bag back at the hotel. The Angkor Enterprise ticket office opens its doors at 5:00 and shuts at 17:30, and picking up your pass the afternoon before a sunrise visit spares you the pre-dawn line. Arriving at Angkor Wat in time for sunrise generally means being out the hotel door by roughly 4:45, so lay out what you need the night before.
Heat and sun are a bigger daily concern than most travellers expect: carry water, a hat and sunscreen even on an overcast morning, and pace an Angkor day around the worst of the midday heat rather than pushing straight through it. If your route includes Tonle Sap’s floating villages, remember that water level changes the experience considerably by season; a village that floats comfortably in November can sit largely on dry ground by April, so ask us which stop suits the month you are travelling in.