The cheapest way to get from Phnom Penh airport to downtown

Hi, it’s Takumi. I have been living in Cambodia for almost 3 years.

There are 4 ways to get from Phnom Penh airport to downtown.

1. TukTuk
2. Taxi
3. Uber-like Apps
4. City Bus

In addition to these ways, it depends on the hotel you will stay though, some hotels and guesthouses offer pickup services.

In this column, I’ll introduce City Bus which is the cheapest way to get from Phnom Penh airport to downtown.
If you are a budget traveler, it would help you.

The cheapest way to get from Phnom Penh airport to Phnom Penh City

As I told you above, City Bus is the cheapest way to get from Phnom Penh airport to Phnom Penh City.
The fare is 1,500 KHR for one way. It’s only about 0.37 USD.

The fare of other ways of transportation is roughly as follows.

Taxi: 12 USD*1
TukTuk: 7 USD*1
Uber-like apps: 33,980 KHR (About 8.35 USD*2)
*1 The fare would change depending on the destination.
*2 This fare is the one I recently used. The fare would change depending on the distance and time.

Phnom Penh’s city bus, there are only 3 lines so in most cases you need to transfer to TukTuk or Taxi after you get off the bus.
Even though, still the bus is the cheapset.

Then in the next chapter, I’ll introduce little bit more details of City Bus, how often the bus comes, how to ride and so on.

How to ride City Bus? How was it?

Let’s get started to introduce the further information about City Bus.

• Frequency

It depends on the traffic situation though, the bus comes about every 15 minutes.

• Bus route

Phnom Penh City Bus has 3 routes. The bus you will get from Phnom Penh airport is Line 03.
This is the route map of Line 03. The final destination is Night Market.

• Bus stop

The bus stop you will ride on a bus is here.

• Business hours

05:30 – 20:30

• Fare

The fare is 1,500 KHR for one way. (About 0.37 USD)
*Sometimes they don’t accept paying in dollars.

• Payment

Paying the fare is when you get on the bus. There is a staff to collect your fare in the bus, so you give your fare to he/she.

I used City Bus to get from Phnom Penh airport to the downtown before.
I’ll report how City Bus was.

First, after I arrived at Phnom Penh airport, I went to the bus stop.

Leave the airport, go out onto the main street and head towards the left, you will see the bus stop.

The bus stop location is here.

I waited about five minutes, the bus came.

When I got on the bus and paid the fare to the staff, I received a receipt like this.

Inside the bus, there was A/C and it was comfortable.
The inside of the bus was cleaner than I expected.

My destination was in BKK1 so I got off the bus at Central Market and took a moto taxi.
When you want to get off, you have to press the button to inform the bus driver that you want to get off.

The fare of the moto taxi was 1 USD so the fare from Phnom Penh airport to my destination in BKK1 was totally about 1.37 USD.

It was about 5 times cheaper than TukTuk and about 9times cheaper than Taxi!

If you are a budget traveler and want to save money of transportation, City Bus is the best option for you.

If you have lots of luggage and it’s hard to carry them by bus, I recommend you to use Uber-like apps.
I’ll introduce Cambodian Uber-like apps in the next chapter.

Do you have too many pieces of luggage to take a bus?

You may be surprised, but there are Uber-like apps in Cambodia. There are more than 5 Uber-like apps in Cambodia.

I recommend EXNET Taxi Cambodia among them.
This app is the most stable and you can get Taxi quickly in 5 – 10 mins.

EXNET Taxi Cambodia

This app sends you SMS when you register this app so you need to get Cambodian SIM card or enable the international data loaming to receive SMS.

If you want to get Cambodian SIM card, you can get it at outside of the airport, nearby Burger King.

As I mentioned above, the fare of EXNET Taxi Cambodia from Phnom Penh airport to the downtown (BKK1) was 33,980 KHR (About 8.35 USD).
And it took 44 mins. I used EXNET Taxi Cambodia in the evening, so it took longer time more than usual.

Summary

If you are a budget traveler, City Bus is the best way to get from Phnom Penh airport to the downtown.
If you have enough budget or have lots of luggages, Uber-like apps (EXNET Taxi Cambodia) is the best option for you.

I hope this column would help you when you visit Phnom Penh.
If you have any questions, please contact me on the following Facebook page.
CONPATH Facebook page

Review: EXNET Taxi Cambodia, The Cambodian First Ride-Hailing App Like Uber