Pub Street
At five o'clock each evening, vehicles are turned back at the corners of Street 8 and the road becomes something else entirely — a kilometre of open tarmac filling fast with tuk-tuks dropping off, music leaking from a dozen doorways at once, and the amber glow of neon cutting through the Cambodian dusk. This is Pub Street, the name locals and travellers pinned to it around 2008, long after the bars had already made it the de facto centre of Siem Reap's nights.
It runs from the Red Piano Restaurant at one end to Banana Leaf at the other, with the Old Market sitting just alongside. The oldest bar on the strip, Angkor What?, has been here since 1998 — before the street was even paved. That graffiti-covered wall inside is a kind of guestbook for everyone who passed through.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who return tend to have the same advice: arrive just before five to claim a table with a view of the street before it fills, order draught beer during happy hour when it drops to fifty cents a glass, and make it to Temple Club by 7:30 for the free Apsara dance on the rooftop. The alleys branching off the main strip are where the massage parlours sit — three dollars, worth every riel.
Deals in Pub Street
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How Pub Street came to be
The first bar appeared in 1998, when Angkor What? opened on what was then an unpaved, unremarkable street beside the Old Market. Two years later, Red Piano followed. Local brothers Lee Korngvong and Lee Kongsren recognised what was forming and leaned into it — their Temple Group eventually grew from a single bar into an operation employing more than 1,200 people.
The wider catalyst was unexpected: Angelina Jolie spent time in Siem Reap during the 2001 filming of Tomb Raider at the Angkor temples, reportedly frequenting Red Piano, and the international attention that followed pulled a new wave of travellers toward the city and the strip. The street was formally paved in 2005, the name stuck around 2008, and during the COVID closure years the infrastructure was overhauled with a new sewerage system — the street that reopened was, physically at least, better built than the one that shut.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
November through March is the most comfortable window — dry, rarely above 32°C, and low humidity. The rainy season runs May through October, bringing daily downpours and humidity that stays above 70%; since Pub Street is an evening destination and showers tend to pass quickly, it's workable, though April and May are genuinely punishing, with highs occasionally reaching 39°C.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.