Butterflies Garden
Butterflies Garden is a haven of tranquility. A breath east of the river in the Wat Bo area, 1,500 Angkorean Butterflies dance around you in this garden paradise. The garden also plays host to some 500 flowering plants, fruiting trees, and a Japanese carp stocked pond. Every Friday night at 7.30pm the garden springs to life with a performance of Apsara and traditional Khmer dancing, but all evenings are romantic in an environment like this. The Garden has recently expanded and improved its reasonably priced menu, which is prepared by graduates of the Shinta Mani Hospitality Institute. This is a program for disadvantaged youth providing rigorous training in Western and Asian culinary styles at the kitchens of the prestigious Shinta Mani Hotel. The perfect antidote for those heavy temple days. Grab a cool iced glass, and a good book to drift away the afternoon.

Siem Reap Night Bar
Crocodiles make noises not too far removed from the cute little noises the geckos make, albeit in a “give me half a chance and I’ll tear your face off” type way. I didn’t know this until I heard their gentle tones echoing across Englishman Wil¬liam’s friendly relaxed bar, tucked in the passage north of bar street. This place is a find, aside from “Croc” and “Dile”, the bars longest residents who are engaging enough on their own. It’s a place where you can come and properly relax, away from the bar street clamour. Where the tunes are at a level that doesn’t wash away the conversation and the company is excellent. Join the expats on a Sunday for the raffle, where buying any drink puts you in with a chance of winning 20, and every day the internet is free as is the conversation. Happy hour every day from 6pm.

Temple Club
A Pub Street staple, a thoroughbred backpacker Mecca, they “play them, and play them loud”. Only once the locals start their aerobics as the sun drags itself off the floor, do things start to quieten down at the Temple Club. After a quick wash up the kitchen and the doors open again at 7am, ready to start pumping out breakfasts to the worldly weary who’ve just realised that they’ve already missed their morning booking to the real temples. In the interim everything is here that you would expect from this cousin of the excesses of the Khao San Road, three free pool tables, a big screen television, a shed load of alcohol, a very big amplifier, and some even bigger speakers. The DJ, who has obviously been party to many a backpacker's “IPod”, keeps everyone on their feet relentlessly until dawn rolls around once again.

X Rooftop Bar
As the bright star of Bethlehem drew the three wise men towards the holy saviour, the bright X shining down on Pub Street draws those with equally divine guidance up to Scott. This charismatic Californian skippers the remarkable X Rooftop Bar towards, who only knows what, until dawn every day. Weird behaviour is a familiar staple and occasionally something wonderful pops out, for example by the time you read this there should be a full half pipe on the top of this place. There’s already a ridiculously big 4 metre projection screen. Watch the output from your “helmet cam” on the screen in the fore¬ground, whilst upside down on the half pipe five storeys up over bar street, waving at the less educated backpackers below. Try the “shark attack” with a lot of “shark” and even more “attack” before attempting anything, and don’t leave without eating at least five “sliders”.