Street 136Phnom Penh, Cambodia · 2026 guide

Street 136 is the short east–west street running inland from Sisowath Quay in central Phnom Penh, and it holds the highest concentration of hostess bars in Cambodia — somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five of them, depending on the month, in about 200 metres between the riverfront and Street 5.

Calling it a strip oversells it. This is two blocks, not two kilometres. You can walk the whole thing in three minutes and see every frontage on the way. What Street 136 has instead of scale is convenience: the bars are shoulder to shoulder, the beer is a dollar and change, several of the better hotels in the city are on the same street, and nobody is going to hustle you off your stool.

What is here (as of August 2026). The long-standing rooms are the ones worth starting with. OSTEX Bar 136 is the biggest venue on the street — a proper multi-room operation with dancers, a DJ, pool tables and KTV rooms upstairs. Xanadu is the other big name, loud and busy on a Friday. The old Route 136 was split into two adjoining bars, Amazing and Wow, which now run as a pair, and Score 2 KTV occupies what regulars still call the Hello Sweetie room. Around them sit half a dozen smaller places, most of them a single room with a bar counter, a pool table and eight to fifteen women working the floor. Rooms change hands every season; the street does not.

How it works. Exactly as in Thailand, with the volume down. There is no cover charge anywhere on Street 136 and no stage show worth the name. You walk in, sit at the bar or at a table, and order — draft beer runs $1.50–3, with daytime and early-evening promotions down to about a dollar. A hostess sits with you, and if you want her to stay you buy her a ladies’ drink, typically $4–6, of which she keeps a share. The bar-fine system exists here, run by the bar, and the etiquette around it is the same as everywhere else in the region; how the bar scenes work explains the whole system. Tabs are usually kept on a slip at the bar. Check it before you settle; it is normal, not rude.

When to go. Some rooms open at lunchtime and a couple never seem to close, but the street proper wakes up around 8pm, fills between 9pm and 1am, and thins out after that unless something is on. Sunday to Wednesday it is quiet enough to have a real conversation. Friday and Saturday it is the busiest two blocks in Cambodia, which in Phnom Penh terms means you might have to wait for a pool table.

Who you will share it with. Fewer Western retirees than you would expect and more of everyone else. Since the borders reopened the clientele has broadened: Australians and Brits who have been coming for twenty years, Japanese and Korean visitors, Indian tour groups, Chinese businessmen, and a steady core of expats who work in the city and treat one particular bar as an office. The women are mostly Khmer, a good number from the provinces, with some Vietnamese; English ranges from fluent to a phone translator, and the ones who speak it best are usually the ones who have been on the street longest.

Where to stay on it. This is the practical argument for Street 136. The Sun & Moon Urban Hotel sits at the top of the street on the corner of Street 15, and Lux Riverside is at the bottom, twenty metres from the Quay. Both are reported guest-friendly, both are a stagger from every bar on the street, and both are cheaper than a mid-range room in Bangkok. See the Phnom Penh hotels page for the rest.

The spillover streets. If 136 is quiet, the same scene continues on the parallel streets: Street 130 one block north has a big spread of bars and the gin bars on the corner, Street 118 and Street 110 have smaller clusters, and Street 5 running between them holds about a dozen one-room places. Nothing is more than five minutes on foot from anything else, which is the real point of drinking in this city. Street 104 and the Riverside is the next zone north.

Safety and annoyances. The street itself is fine — busy, lit, plenty of staff outside, security on the bigger doors. The risks are the ones that apply to the whole city: bag and phone snatching from motorbikes on the Quay end, a tuk-tuk driver who suddenly has no change, and your own tab if you let a round get away from you. Keep your phone in a front pocket when you are walking, not in your hand. Pay as you go for your first night in a new room. And take a booked tuk-tuk home rather than walking the last dark block, however short it is.