Ho Chi Minh City or Siem Reap?

Neither city is a beach destination, and in both of them swimming means a hotel pool. Ho Chi Minh City at least has the sea within reach: Vung Tau is about two hours away by road or fast boat, with warm but often cloudy water and weekend crowds.

Siem Reap has nothing like it. The Tonle Sap is a muddy lake that nobody swims in, and the coast is most of a day's drive away, so the pool after a morning at the temples is all the swimming you will get.

The gap here is wide. Ho Chi Minh City is one of Southeast Asia's great eating cities, with broken-rice plates, banh xeo, snail stalls after dark and the Chinese-Vietnamese cooking of Cholon. Alongside these sit a coffee culture of its own, modern Vietnamese restaurants and the international scene in Thao Dien.

Siem Reap eats well if you go looking: fish amok, num banh chok at the morning stalls and a few tasting-menu kitchens working with Khmer ingredients. The centre around Pub Street, though, is mostly backpacker menus, and the range is a fraction of Saigon's.

Here the order flips sharply. Ho Chi Minh City's sights are about recent history: the War Remnants Museum, the Reunification Palace, the French landmarks around Dong Khoi and the incense-filled assembly halls of Cholon. They are worth seeing, but they fill two or three days rather than justifying the journey.

Angkor is in a different league. Angkor Wat, the stone faces of the Bayon in Angkor Thom and the root-split galleries of Ta Prohm take three days without exhausting the park, and the Angkor National Museum in town adds useful context.

Each city has a loud, neon-lit backpacker strip, Bui Vien in Saigon and Pub Street in Siem Reap. The difference is what lies beyond it. Ho Chi Minh City adds rooftop bars above the skyline, cocktail bars up apartment stairwells, clubs with a young local crowd and the calmer expatriate bars of Thao Dien.

Siem Reap has a few quieter bars along the river and in the side alleys but no club culture, and the dawn starts at Angkor keep most nights short anyway.

Neither city has mountains, but Siem Reap's countryside is easier to get into. Lanes through rice paddies and sugar palms make for gentle cycling, boats cross the Tonle Sap to the stork and pelican colonies at Prek Toal, and Phnom Kulen and Kbal Spean add a waterfall and jungle trails.

Ho Chi Minh City is densely built, and its green space is a few parks such as Tao Dan. The Can Gio mangroves and the Mekong Delta canals are its real nature, and both are a drive away.

The two are evenly matched, but the outings differ in theme. From Ho Chi Minh City the days out mix war history and river life: the Cu Chi tunnels, the Cao Dai Holy See at Tay Ninh, boat trips through the Mekong from My Tho and Ben Tre, and the seaside at Vung Tau.

From Siem Reap nearly every trip is another temple, whether the fine pink carving of Banteay Srei, the collapsed and overgrown Beng Mealea or remote Koh Ker. The stilt villages of the Tonle Sap are the alternative. In both, the choice thins out quickly beyond these.

Both cities are warm towards children and short on attractions built for them, and in both the heat and traffic make the hotel pool part of every day. Ho Chi Minh City has more to fill an afternoon, with the old zoo and botanical garden, Dam Sen's rides and water park, and the eccentric Suoi Tien.

Siem Reap suits older children better. They will love scrambling through Ta Prohm and taking boats to the stilt villages, but the steep temple steps soon wear out younger ones.

Ho Chi Minh City gives you more ways to get about: a walkable colonial core, a metro line running east from Ben Thanh, a river bus, and cheap ride-hailing cars and motorbike taxis everywhere. Its traffic is far heavier, though, and bag snatching from passing bikes means keeping your phone away from the kerb.

Siem Reap has no public transport, so you are driven almost everywhere: by tuk-tuk in town, and by a hired driver or car for the temples. Cycling the flat Angkor circuits is the pleasant exception.

Ho Chi Minh City gives shoppers far more scope. It has the haggling stalls of Ben Thanh and the wholesale bustle of Binh Tay, tailors who make suits and ao dai within days, and lacquerware and Song Be ceramics, with malls of international labels and the Thao Dien boutiques on top.

Siem Reap is limited to markets and crafts, with no fashion or department stores. Its social-enterprise workshops for silk, stone carving and lacquer do sell pieces of a higher standard than the tourist stalls in either city.

Both are very cheap, and anyone eating at stalls will spend little in either. The extra costs fall in different places. In Ho Chi Minh City they come from its business-capital layer of international hotels, rooftop bars and imported wine. In Siem Reap the one big outlay is the Angkor pass, which takes a real bite out of a short stay.

Ho Chi Minh City's French-built Opera House gives it something Siem Reap lacks entirely: a formal stage with its own ballet and symphony orchestra, plus acrobatic shows drawn from southern village life. Water puppetry, the sentimental songs of cai luong in a few surviving theatres and small jazz rooms can fill another evening or two, though it is still a modest scene.

Siem Reap has no theatre or concert hall, so its evenings come down to two things. Apsara dance, the court tradition carved on the temple walls, is best seen at the smaller, more serious performances rather than the buffet halls. The widely admired Cambodian circus under its big top, where young performers tell Khmer stories through acrobatics and live music, is the other.

Massage is cheap and everywhere in both cities, so the difference is in the setting. Ho Chi Minh City's speciality is the long reclining shampoo with scalp and face massage. Outside the treatment room, though, calm has to be found in the parks at dawn, in temple courtyards or in Thao Dien.

Siem Reap is easier to unwind in. It has garden hotels with pools, Khmer massage, yoga classes and small retreats, and quiet lanes across the river, as long as you stay away from Pub Street.