Bagan or Siem Reap?

Neither has a beach, so for both, swimming means the hotel pool. In Bagan the Irrawaddy is for sunset boat trips rather than bathing, and you need to choose a place to stay with a pool, because not all of them have one.

Siem Reap's Tonle Sap is a vast, muddy lake. Pools are standard at most guesthouses and resorts, and the afternoon swim after a dawn at the temples is built into the rhythm of a stay here. The Gulf of Thailand coast is most of a day's drive away.

Siem Reap eats noticeably better. Khmer cooking has real depth, from fish amok in banana leaf to morning stalls ladling green fish curry over rice noodles, and a small group of serious kitchens builds tasting menus on local produce. The best meals are a tuk-tuk ride away from the pizza and backpacker menus of Pub Street.

Bagan's highlight is the Burmese curry spread, with its many small side dishes, alongside tea-leaf salad, mohinga at breakfast and tea shops serving sweet milky tea. Beyond that, restaurants across Nyaung U and New Bagan tend to serve the same mixed tourist menu, and there is nothing at the top end.

These are two of Asia's greatest temple sites, and either one is worth the journey. What separates them is setting and scale. Bagan is an open plain with more than two thousand brick temples and stupas, nearly all from the same era of the Pagan kings, including the gilded Shwezigon and the white Ananda. Much of the pleasure is in finding small shrines with faded murals along dirt tracks. Climbing is restricted, though, and some of the repairs after the 2016 earthquake are heavy-handed.

Angkor is monumental stone set in forest. Angkor Wat, the carved faces of the Bayon and the tree-gripped galleries of Ta Prohm are bigger and more dramatic. Siem Reap also has a little more to see in town, with its colonial quarter and the Angkor National Museum.

There is a real difference here. In Bagan, evenings are dinner and a cold beer on Nyaung U's restaurant strip, and the town goes dark by ten.

Siem Reap has Pub Street, a few blocks of neon bars, cheap draught beer and loud music that run late every night, with quieter cocktail and wine bars along the river. It is a sociable backpacker scene rather than a club town, but it gives you somewhere to go.

Both sit on flat, hot plains, but Siem Reap's surroundings have a little more variety. Boats cross the Tonle Sap to the flooded forest and the bird colonies of Prek Toal, and Phnom Kulen and Kbal Spean add waterfalls and short jungle trails.

Bagan's dry scrub and peanut fields are beautiful mainly for the temples rising from them, seen from a balloon or a river boat. Mount Popa's forested volcanic slopes are the only real walking nearby.

Siem Reap has the stronger list of outings. Beyond the main Angkor park are Banteay Srei's fine pink sandstone carving, the overgrown ruins of Beng Mealea, the early Roluos temples and Koh Ker's pyramid, plus the stilt villages on the lake, so a week fills easily.

Bagan has fewer options. The barefoot climb to the nat shrines at Taung Kalat on Mount Popa is memorable, and Salay's carved teak monastery and the market town of Pakokku make quieter half days. After that the choices run out.

Neither suits young children, but Siem Reap is the easier of the two with older ones. Scrambling through root-wrapped ruins, riding tuk-tuks and taking boats to the stilt villages feel like adventures, and a family room with a pool costs little.

Bagan offers horse carts, cycling and the balloon flight. However, its temples look much alike to children, distances across the dusty plain are long, and medical care is basic, so it needs more careful planning.

In both places you will mostly be driven or riding something, but Siem Reap is a little easier. Its centre around the Old Market and the river can be walked, tuk-tuks can be booked through ride-hailing apps, and a driver for the day is the standard way to see Angkor.

In Bagan, Nyaung U, Old Bagan and New Bagan are several kilometres apart, so the e-bike is the default. It is fun on the open tracks but tricky in deep sand, and walking only works within a single cluster of temples.

Shopping is about crafts in both places, and neither has fashion or malls. Bagan is the home of Burmese lacquerware, and watching bowls built up layer by layer in the Myinkaba workshops is the reason to shop. You will also find sand paintings at the temples and longyi cloth in Nyaung U market.

Siem Reap has a wider range: silk, kramas and silver at the Old Market, night markets by the river, and social-enterprise workshops for weaving and carving, along with a few boutiques selling Cambodian-made homewares.

Both are very cheap, and in each the biggest single cost is the foreigners' entry fee for the temple zone. In Bagan the other big treat is the dawn balloon flight, and staying in Nyaung U keeps everything else low.

In Siem Reap, a pool, a tuk-tuk driver for the day and a nightly massage all fit a modest budget. Places aimed at visitors cost noticeably more than the stalls locals use.

Siem Reap has more worth staying up for. Apsara dance brings the figures carved on the temple walls to life, best at the smaller, more serious performances, and the contemporary Cambodian circus under its big top, staged by young performers from a training school, is widely admired.

Bagan offers marionette shows and dance at dinner restaurants. With luck, a pagoda festival at a temple such as Ananda brings an all-night zat pwe of music, dance and comedy.

Siem Reap is much better for unwinding. Khmer massage is available on almost every street, hotel spas use herbal compresses, and yoga and small retreats are easy to arrange. The quiet lanes across the river are the place to stay, away from the noise of Pub Street.

Bagan has its own calm, with long resting afternoons and evening light fading over the plain. Treatments are mostly found at the riverside resorts in Old and New Bagan or at simple places in Nyaung U, and dust and touts at the busiest temples can break the peace.