What Cambodia Actually Costs
Cambodia sits at the bottom of the pile for daily spending, and that is the main reason people go. A realistic budget runs around $20 to $30 per day depending on your route and what you actually do. Dorm bed, street food, local transport. That gets you through most days. Laos and Cambodia consistently offer the lowest daily costs in the region, roughly $25 to $35 per day once you add a few extras. Vietnam is a close runner-up and arguably better value once you factor in the quality and variety of food and sights, but Cambodia is cheaper on paper and stays cheaper in practice.
Southeast Asia as a whole runs from about $20 to $100 per day by country. Vietnam and Cambodia sit at the $20 end. Singapore is the outlier at $60 to $100 per day. Nepal, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India and Indonesia are among the most affordable countries to visit in 2026, with that same $20 to $30 daily figure holding for backpackers.
Getting Around
There is a new train from Phnom Penh to Battambang. It is not that comfortable. There is also a train from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville. Tickets cost $5 to $7. Departures are not very common, so you have to plan ahead. The journey takes about six hours. That is the trade: $5 to $7 and six hours, or a bus that leaves more often for similar money. Either way you are not covering ground fast.
Tuk-tuks add up. In Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, short hops feel cheap individually and then you look at the total. This is the quiet budget killer in Cambodia. The train is cheap; the tuk-tuks between the station and everywhere else are not.
The Angkor Wat Line Item
Angkor Wat is the one expense you cannot dodge if you are in Siem Reap. The pass costs $37. Across a longer trip, the portion of a budget spent on Angkor Wat passes came to $144. That is not a per-day cost. It is a lump you plan around.
Tours and attractions across a bigger regional trip ran to $1,385, covering things like a Yala National Park safari, scuba diving and the Angkor Wat entrance. That figure is for a multi-country itinerary, not Cambodia alone. Read it as a warning: passes, dives and safaris are where the money goes. Daily living is cheap. The set-piece activities are not.
Connectivity
Get a local SIM. Smart in Cambodia. DTAC or AIS in Thailand, Viettel in Vietnam. They cost $3 to $10. Data is cheap and you will need maps and a ride-hailing app. Ten dollars at the start of a trip removes a lot of small daily friction, and it is one of the few purchases in Cambodia that does not scale up with how long you stay.
The Borders
Proof of onward travel needs to be a flight out of Thailand. There are plenty of dirt cheap flights within Southeast Asia, so this is not the obstacle it sounds like. Booking a flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh for 30 days after the initial Thailand arrival date satisfies the requirement. It also lines up with a route that runs Thailand into Cambodia rather than the other way around.
Free Is Possible
Accommodation can hit $0. Staying with a friend met earlier in Cambodia meant the entire accommodation cost for that portion of the trip was nothing. That is not a strategy you can plan, but it is worth knowing that the daily $20 to $30 assumes you are paying for a bed. Remove the bed and the number drops hard.
The Long Loop
A one-month loop through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam has a real total, and it is higher than four weeks of $20 days would suggest. The set-piece attractions, the tuk-tuks, the trains with limited departures that force a bus instead, the onward flight out of Thailand. Cambodia is the cheapest link in that chain, and it is still where the Angkor pass lands as a single $37 hit and the passes across a trip reach $144.
Prices change. These figures come from a 2014 trip plus more recent regional numbers, so treat the direction as reliable and the exact amounts as a starting point. The $5 to $7 train ticket and the $3 to $10 SIM are small. The $20 to $30 day is the backbone. Everything else is what you choose to add.
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