There are pros and cons for both places, for instance Sihanoukville has Russians, Siem Reap has Japanese. SNV has the beach, SR has the temples. Decisions....decisions.
If you had to live in either SNV or SR, with no other choices, which one would you choose?

Sin city vs Disneyland

I'll take the former any day.

sv, cheaper, cooler weather, not overrun with tourists.

Frankly, I wouldn't live in either place. Just visiting there to let my kids see the ocean or Angkor Wat and environs makes me feel sick at my stomach.

Kompong Som. Beach, cooler, easy to get around. Cons: pretentious twats from PP over the weekends, Russians and backpackers, albeit they're in SR as well. SR to visit for sure but exactly how many temples do you want to explore ?

Lol I love the cartoon!!!

Kuroneko wrote:

SiEm Riep

How many times can you look at a pile of rocks, no matter how wonderful they are? On the other hand the ocean, beach's and islands give you a never ending variety. You have a sunny day a rock just sets there and gets hot, The ocean water turns blue, the beach white and the water wonderful to swim in. You have a storm and the rock gets wet, on the other hand the ocean provides endless storm entertainment. Rocks provide no food, oceans/beach's provide fish, crabs, squid, prawns, etc. Angkor Wat was wonderful for about two days, after that I got bored.

I always thought it took an impressive amount of poor policy-making to have kept SHV from becoming a world famous and successful resort town already. That time may yet come, but the place should have been THE beach holiday destination of choice for masses of Russians and Chinese tourists over a decade ago. Of course, the unusually long rainy season and incredibly poor transportation infrastructure hasn't helped, but I've seen those beaches empty at the height of what should be the high season. It's continually "up and coming" by all eager entrepreneurs, but never quite gets there.

SHV and SR will probably always be a paired vacation spot. A few days to see the temples and a few days at the beach, with a few obligatory days in PP thrown in.