Bangkok to Phnom Penh overland
Two railways that do not meet, and the road that joins them.
6 legs · 3 days · 1 border · about $84 all in
Open this route in the planner Change the pace, the beds or the passport and the numbers follow.
Hanay · CC BY-SA 3.0Pragmatic routing
Bangkok Phnom Penh overland
Bangkok to Phnom Penh is a rail journey for part of its length and an honest slog for the rest: 6 legs (2 on rails, 1 by sea, 3 by road) across 2 countries, with 1 frontier in between. The one to watch: Aranyaprathet ↔ Poipet has a moving part. It works and it is comfortable enough, but the journey here is transport rather than the reward — plan the stops, not just the legs.
Stations that catch people out
- Krung Thep Aphiwat Bangkok's long-distance terminal since 2023 — not the old Hua Lamphong. Confirm which terminal your specific train uses.
- Hua Lamphong Now mostly local services, but some eastern trains (Aranyaprathet) still start here.
- Siem Reap Angkor has no railway. The nearest railhead is Sisophon, about two hours away by road.
The route
Durations are typical scheduled running times, not departures, and the figure under each service is how often it runs — the number that decides whether a missed connection costs you an hour or a day. Where a last departure is shown it is the one worth setting an alarm for. No planner in this region can give you a departure time you should trust: the operators publish nothing in common. Take these legs to the booking sites below and read the real clock there.
| Leg & operator | Time | Fare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Krung Thep Aphiwat Hua Lamphong Urban metro Structural MRT Blue Line, 2 stops every few minutes · roughly 06:00 to midnight Pay on the spot | 24m | $1 |
| Change at Hua Lamphong allow 90 min minimum Same station, different operators — no through ticketing, no held connection | |||
| 2 | Hua Lamphong Aranyaprathet State Railway of Thailand Reported Ordinary 275/2793rd class fan 10 a day · ordinary trains through the day via Chachoengsao Book with SRTdticket.railway.co.th | 5h 30m | $2 |
| Change at Aranyaprathet allow 4 h minimum International border crossed on foot | |||
| 3 | Aranyaprathet Poipet Local transfer Structural Tuk-tuk / on foot through the border complex on demand · taxis, tuk-tuks and songthaews wait at the station; nothing to time Pay on the spot | 30m | $2 |
| Change at Poipet allow 4 h minimum International border crossed on foot | |||
| 4 | Poipet Sisophon Royal Railway Cambodia Verify Royal Railway northern line 0–2 · selected days only — confirm the train runs on your date before anything else Verify the train runs at all on your date — frequency is often weekends plus selected days. Book with Royalroyal-railway.com | 1h | $1.5 |
| Change at Sisophon allow 90 min minimum Same station, different operators — no through ticketing, no held connection | |||
| 5 | Sisophon Siem Reap Local transfer Reported Bus / shared taxi on demand · taxis, tuk-tuks and songthaews wait at the station; nothing to time Pay on the spot | 2h | $6 |
| Change at Siem Reap allow 4 h minimum Onward ferry reached by road transfer | |||
| 6 | Siem Reap Phnom Penh Tonlé Sap boat Verify Tonlé Sap fast boat 1 a day · one departure in the morning, and only when the lake is high last 07:30 Only runs when the lake is high, roughly August to March, and it is a hot crowded six hours. People take it for the floating villages, not the comfort. No bookable site of its own — try 12Go12go.asia | 6h | $35 |
Day by day
Shape, not a timetable. This is built from running times, the connection buffers above and your chosen pace — it deliberately states no departure time, because none of these operators publish one this page could stand behind. Use it to decide how many nights to book and where; use the operator sites for the clock.
- Krung Thep Aphiwat Hua Lamphong MRT Blue Line, 2 stops 24m
- Bangkok Aranyaprathet Ordinary 275/279 5h 30m
- Aranyaprathet Poipet Tuk-tuk / on foot through the border complex 30m
- Poipet Sisophon Royal Railway northern line 1h
- Sisophon Siem Reap Bus / shared taxi 2h
- Siem Reap Phnom Penh Tonlé Sap fast boat 6h
Where you sleep
Priced where the journey actually stops, not averaged across the region — the difference between a night in Siem Reap and a night in Singapore is a factor of five, and it is worth seeing before you book. Figures are indicative low-season rates for a room booked a week or two out; the totals below use the simple private room band.
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Poipet night of day 1 $18$8hostel bed$18simple private room$35good mid-range hotel
A casino border town. If you can reach Battambang or Sisophon instead, do — it is a better night in every way.
-
Siem Reap night of day 2 $18$6hostel bed$18simple private room$45good mid-range hotel
The best value on this map — Siem Reap has more rooms than it has visitors, and the mid-range is genuinely good.
Border crossings
Itineraries die at frontiers, not on track. Never plan one of these without checking the current position for your own passport.
Aranyaprathet ↔ Poipet
Thailand ↔ Cambodia- Where
- Border complex between the two railheads, crossed on foot or by short tuk-tuk
- On the train?
- No — SRT terminates at Aranyaprathet, Royal Railway starts at Poipet
- Luggage
- Yes, carried across
- Visa
- Get the Cambodian e-visa in advance. It removes most of the friction and most of the scam surface.
- Cash on the far side
- US dollars in small notes — Cambodia runs on them, and border ATMs are unreliable.
- Time cost
- About 180 minutes of formalities
The trap. The region's most scam-prone crossing: fake "visa offices" positioned before the real one, inflated e-visa fees, invented "processing" charges. Use only the official immigration building and know the correct official fee before you arrive. Budget 2–3 hours end to end, more at weekends.
Verify. Verify whether a Royal Railway train runs at all on your arrival day, or plan a night in Poipet or Battambang.
Where this breaks
Ranked by what actually ends trips, not by probability. A missed last connection costs a day and an unplanned hotel; a missed afternoon connection costs an afternoon.
-
caution
Aranyaprathet ↔ Poipet has a moving part
Verify whether a Royal Railway train runs at all on your arrival day, or plan a night in Poipet or Battambang.
What to do. Confirm the current position before you book anything that depends on it.
-
caution
Poipet to Sisophon is not a service we can stand behind
Verify the train runs at all on your date — frequency is often weekends plus selected days.
What to do. Verify it is running on your date before you build the rest of the itinerary around it.
-
caution
Siem Reap to Phnom Penh is not a service we can stand behind
Only runs when the lake is high, roughly August to March, and it is a hot crowded six hours. People take it for the floating villages, not the comfort.
What to do. Verify it is running on your date before you build the rest of the itinerary around it.
-
caution
Aranyaprathet needs 4 hours, not a connection
International border crossed on foot. A gap smaller than this is not a connection — it is a missed train with a plausible-looking timetable behind it.
What to do. Plan an overnight stop here rather than trying to make it in one day.
-
caution
Poipet needs 4 hours, not a connection
International border crossed on foot. A gap smaller than this is not a connection — it is a missed train with a plausible-looking timetable behind it.
What to do. Plan an overnight stop here rather than trying to make it in one day.
-
caution
Siem Reap needs 4 hours, not a connection
Onward ferry reached by road transfer. A gap smaller than this is not a connection — it is a missed train with a plausible-looking timetable behind it.
What to do. Plan an overnight stop here rather than trying to make it in one day.
-
note
The Siem Reap – Phnom Penh boat is weather-dependent
Ferries are cancelled rather than delayed, and a cancellation costs a day rather than an afternoon.
What to do. Never make this crossing the only path to a fixed commitment. Leave a slack day between it and any flight home.
Booking sequence
Book in order of scarcity times window length, not in the order you travel. The shortest leg on the whole spine sells out first.
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1
State Railway of Thailand
~90 days
Sleepers on trains 9/10 and the southern overnights sell out first.
The official e-ticket site. Foreign cards fail on it fairly often, and an aggregator is the usual fallback when they do.
Book with SRTdticket.railway.co.th -
2
Royal Railway Cambodia
Limited and short
Verify the train runs at all on your date before anything else.
Schedule changes are announced informally, often on Facebook rather than the site. Confirm the train runs on your date before you plan anything around it.
Book with Royalroyal-railway.com -
3
Sea legs
Mostly turn-up-and-go
Langkawi and Samui routes are worth pre-booking in season, the Mekong slow boat the day before you sail, and the Philippine RORO crossings not at all — they are grounded or they are running.
Everything else on this route, in no particular hurry:
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·
Local transfer
Taxi, tuk-tuk, songthaew or minivan at the station. Agree the fare before you get in.
Pay on the spot -
·
Tonlé Sap boat
Sold through guesthouses and aggregators. Only runs when the lake is high, roughly August to March.
No bookable site of its own — try 12Go12go.asia -
·
Urban metro
Contactless or a stored-value card at the station. Nothing to plan.
Pay on the spot
Where an operator cannot be booked from abroad — the Laos–China Railway above all — an aggregator is the practical route in. They add a fee, and some sell tickets they do not yet hold and buy them when inventory opens, which is a genuine cancellation risk on a scarce sleeper. Prefer the operator wherever the operator actually works, which is most of the time.
No affiliate links on transport. Every booking link above goes straight to the operator or aggregator and earns this project nothing. The operator's own site is listed first because it is usually cheaper and always more reliable, not because of what it pays — that ordering is the most load-bearing judgement on this page and it is not for sale. Booking URLs were last reviewed 2026-07 and are not machine-checked — if one is dead, search the operator name rather than trusting a reseller that ranks well.
Where it does earn. The hotel links in “Where you sleep” and the insurance link below pay a commission, at no extra cost to you. They are marked as paid links. Nothing about them changes a route, a price, or the order of anything: no hotel is recommended over another and no leg is routed differently because of them.
Costs
| Transport, 6 legs | $48 |
| Accommodation, 2 nights — Poipet $18, Siem Reap $18 | $36 |
| Total | $84 |
Against flying
3 days, $84, 6 legs versus a flight of roughly 1h 25m gate to gate at somewhere around $48–101. That fare band is estimated from the 536 km great-circle distance, not from live inventory — check it.
The plane wins on time and often on money. People take this route because the overland journey is the thing they want, not because it is efficient. If that is not you, fly — and there is no shame in the sleeper one way and the plane home.
If you have more time
Where the slow-travel value actually is — the detours that turn a transit into a trip.
Angkor, from Sisophon
+2 nights, ~$12Two hours by road from the railhead at Sisophon. Angkor has no railway and never will, so this road leg is the price of the single best reason to be in Cambodia.
Photography
- Grand Palace — Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Rong Kluea Market — Patiparn.Nice2002bkk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Angkor Wat — Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Tonlé Sap floating villages — David Sim, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Royal Palace, Phnom Penh — Hanay, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons