Things to do in Siem Reap

I have stood at the north pool four times now, and the part nobody tells you is how early the good positions go. By 5am the front rim is a wall of tripods, and the difference between a clean frame and someone's elbow in your foreground is whether you walked in with a small group that knew exactly where to stand. That is what this tour buys you — not the temple, which is free to anyone with a pass, but the choreography of getting to the right edge of the right pool before the sky does anything interesting.

It is a small-group format, which I rate over the big coach circuits: you move at a pace that lets you actually compose, and a guide who can read the morning will steer you to the south pool when the north one is mobbed. At roughly 410,500 VND — call it sixteen US dollars — it is almost absurdly cheap for what is genuinely the headline image of mainland Southeast Asia. Note the price does not include your Angkor Pass; that is the separate $37-and-up ticket from the official centre on Apsara Road.

Pick the sunrise slot if you can bear the alarm. The light at Angkor is never the same twice, and the mornings with a little cloud — November is my quiet favourite for exactly this — are the ones that turn an orange smear into something you will print. Go on day one, before temple fatigue sets in, and let the rest of the complex unfold from there.