Luxor or Siem Reap?

Neither city has a beach. In both, swimming means the hotel pool as a break from the midday heat. The sea is easier to add from Luxor, since the Red Sea coast is about four hours away and has good warm water. Siem Reap's Tonle Sap is a muddy lake for boating, and the Cambodian coast is most of a day's drive.

Siem Reap is the better place to eat. Khmer cooking has real depth, with fish amok, lemongrass soups, green-curry rice noodles from morning stalls and lake fish in the markets. A small group of restaurants also reworks Khmer ingredients with care. The trick is to leave the backpacker menus around Pub Street behind.

Luxor feeds you well enough on ful, taameya, koshari and grilled pigeon, but the visitor restaurants trade on temple views more than cooking. Its best meals tend to be home cooking in West Bank guesthouses.

Both are among the great ancient sites of the world, and Luxor comes out slightly ahead because its heritage is so concentrated. Karnak and Luxor Temple stand in town, and across the river lie the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, Deir el-Bahari, Medinet Habu and the Tombs of the Nobles, with painted interiors Angkor cannot match.

Angkor's appeal lies in scale and setting. Angkor Wat, the faces of the Bayon and the tree-split galleries of Ta Prohm are spread through forest. Siem Reap also has a little more town life, with its colonial quarter and working pagodas, where modern Luxor is plain.

Siem Reap has a real night out and Luxor barely has one. Pub Street and its lanes fill every evening with cheap beer, music and a sociable backpacker crowd, and quieter cocktail bars sit along the river.

In Luxor, a drink means a hotel bar or a rooftop terrace. Local evenings are tea and shisha in street cafés and a stroll on the corniche. Neither city has clubs, and in both, dawn starts keep many nights short.

Siem Reap offers a little more outdoors. Boats cross the Tonle Sap to the flooded forest and the bird colonies of Prek Toal, Phnom Kulen has a waterfall and forest walks, and flat paddy lanes make for easy cycling.

Luxor has a single dramatic view of green Nile banks against bare desert cliffs, best seen from a felucca, from a dawn balloon or on the path over the Theban hills. Its summer heat cuts outdoor time far more sharply.

Luxor has the stronger day trips, though all of them are more temples. Dendera's painted ceilings, Esna's vivid reliefs and Edfu, the most complete Ptolemaic temple in Egypt, are each within about two hours, and Abydos makes a longer day.

Siem Reap's outings are outlying temples too, such as Banteay Srei's carving and the overgrown Beng Mealea, but it adds something Luxor lacks: boat trips to the stilt and floating villages on the Tonle Sap.

The two are about equal for families, and both suit older children better than toddlers. Siem Reap has more scope for adventure, with children clambering through root-tangled ruins, riding tuk-tuks and taking boats to stilt villages. Luxor appeals to children already fascinated by mummies, with painted tombs and the Mummification Museum.

Luxor's persistent touts and shadeless sites wear children down. Siem Reap's steep temple steps and chaotic traffic do the same.

In both cities you will be driven more than you walk. In Luxor the river shapes every day: the public ferry or a motorboat to the West Bank, then a taxi or driver for the tombs, with every fare agreed in advance.

Siem Reap is simpler in one way, with tuk-tuks on every corner and bookable by app. The flat Angkor circuits also make cycling or an e-bike a real option. Broken pavements in both towns make walking in the heat hard work.

Neither town is a place to come for shopping, and in both the best buy is something you have watched being made. Luxor has one craft like this: the alabaster carvers on the West Bank, who shape stone vessels by hand. Beyond them, the souk and the stalls at every temple gate sell factory-made papyrus, scarves and galabiyas, and the sellers do not give up easily.

Siem Reap has stone carvers too, but they are only one craft among several. Weavers work silk on the loom, and other craftspeople carve wood and finish lacquer, many of them in workshops set up to teach local people a trade. The work is far finer than the Old Market stock, and a handful of boutiques sell Cambodian-made clothes and things for the home, so you can come away with more than souvenirs. Expect to bargain at the stalls in both towns.

Both are very cheap for rooms, local food and transport, and in both the big cost is entry to the sights. They differ in how that cost arrives. In Luxor, separate fees at every temple and tomb, plus supplements for special tombs, add up over several days. In Siem Reap, the single Angkor pass covers the park, and it hits a short stay hardest. Haggling over drivers matters more in Luxor, while in Siem Reap a daily massage is easily affordable.

Siem Reap gives you a few evenings worth booking. Apsara dance brings the figures from the temple walls to life, and the Cambodian circus under a big top, run by a school for young performers, is widely admired.

Luxor's one real offering is the sound-and-light walk through floodlit Karnak, plus belly dance and tanoura shows put on for hotel guests. Neither has a theatre or concert hall.

Siem Reap is far easier to unwind in. Khmer massage rooms line the central streets, many garden hotels have spas using herbal compresses, and yoga classes and small retreats are easy to find.

In Luxor, spa treatment is mostly limited to a hammam in one of the larger riverside hotels. Rest there comes from a pool through the afternoon heat and a mud-brick guesthouse among West Bank fields, away from the touts of the East Bank.