Cambodia has the cheapest beer on our whole route. In Siem Reap it costs fifty cents, in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Kampot sixty, and that is not a special offer, it is just the price. A bed costs five euros, a meal two and a half, and you order your tuk-tuk through an app for a euro or two.
What makes Cambodia different from its neighbours is not how cheap it is but how little the price moves: there is barely any gap. Three euros separate the cheapest stop from the most expensive one, so you never have to plan your route around your wallet. When the money does go, it goes in one go: on the Angkor pass and the tuk-tuk that drives you around the temples all day.
For the country as a whole, count on about €25 a day. That is higher than every single figure below, and that is right: it also covers the buses between the stops and the activities you came for.
Daily budget per stop
This is what you spend per day in each place, without the transport to get there and without tours:
- Battambang: €17
- Kampot: €17
- Phnom Penh: €20
- Siem Reap: €20
- Koh Rong: €20
Five stops, three euros apart. That makes Cambodia the easiest country on the route to budget for.
Our verdict: count on €20 a day on the ground and you are fine everywhere
What a bed costs
A dorm bed costs €5 in Battambang, Kampot, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and €7 on Koh Rong. The island is a little more expensive across the board, because everything has to come in by boat.
Koh Rong has one more thing to know: cash machines are few and unreliable. Bring enough cash from the mainland, or you end up paying with whatever happens to be in your pocket.
What food and drink cost
A meal costs €2 in Battambang, €2.50 in Kampot, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and €3 on Koh Rong. That is street food and the ordinary places: nom banh chok for breakfast on the street, lok lak, amok trey.
Beer here is the cheapest of all five countries: €0.50 in Siem Reap, €0.60 in Battambang, Kampot and Phnom Penh, and €1 on Koh Rong. What one beer costs you in Thailand buys three or four here. Everything else there is to eat is in our guide to food in Cambodia.
Our verdict: Cambodia is the country where you can pull up a stool at every stall you pass without thinking twice
What local transport costs
In Phnom Penh you order a tuk-tuk through PassApp or Grab for about €2, with the price fixed before you get in. On Koh Rong you get between the beaches by boat taxi, about €5 a ride, or you walk the jungle path.
In Battambang and Kampot you rent a scooter for about €7 a day, because everything you want to see there is outside town: the countryside and Phnom Sampeau around Battambang, Bokor Mountain, the pepper plantations and Kep around Kampot. Cambodia has its own licence rules for riding one, so check our travel insurance page before you rent.
Siem Reap is the exception, and straight away the biggest transport cost in the country: a tuk-tuk for a whole temple day costs about €12 for the small circuit and a little more for the grand one. That is not a luxury, it is the normal way to do Angkor, because the temples are kilometres apart. Want it cheaper? The small circuit is cyclable, on a bike from about €2.
Between places, a bus ride costs about €8. How those routes run is in our guide to getting around Cambodia.
Where the money really goes
Angkor is the big one. The temple pass comes in one, three and seven day versions, and three days is the right size for most backpackers. On top of that comes the tuk-tuk at about €12 a day. So treat those three days as a separate block from your daily budget, and buy your pass yourself at the official ticket centre. How to split those days is on our Siem Reap page.
After that it is small change. Entry to the hill at Phnom Sampeau is about €2.50, the bamboo train about €5 a person, a tuk-tuk for half a day about €10, and the bats cost you nothing. A street food tour in Phnom Penh starts at around €25 and is worth it if you want to find the places you would otherwise walk straight past.
And then there is Siem Reap airport: it is fifty kilometres out of town, so count on €8 for a shared bus or double that for a taxi.
Our verdict: put Angkor in its own line of your budget and the rest of Cambodia costs you almost nothing
How much do ten days in Cambodia cost?
At about €25 a day you end up around €250 for ten days, including the transport between stops, your beds, your food and the usual activities. Add your Angkor pass, plus about €36 for three temple days by tuk-tuk.
Take it slower and leave out Koh Rong, and you come in lower. Linger on the island and you go higher, because everything there costs more and there is not much to do that is free. What those ten days look like is in our Cambodia itinerary.
Paying in dollars
This is worth knowing before you land: in Cambodia you pay mostly in US dollars. You only get riel back as change under a dollar, so your wallet fills up with notes you cannot spend anywhere else. Use them up before you leave the country.
Cash machines give out dollars, so check beforehand what your card charges per withdrawal and take out larger amounts in one go. More on that on our travel cards page.
How much money do you need for ten days in Cambodia?
Count on about €250 for the country itself, plus your Angkor pass and the tuk-tuk that goes with it. With €400 in total you have plenty, even if you do three temple days, ride the bamboo train in Battambang and sleep a few nights on Koh Rong.
Bring a good chunk of that in cash, and definitely for Koh Rong, where the cash machine is unreliable. Cambodia is a country where a few dollar notes in your pocket get you a lot further than a bank card, and that stays true until you are back in a big city.
