מזג האוויר בבאטאמבאנג בפברואר

February is the last comfortable month at Angkor. It is firmly inside the dry season - our row gives 15.5mm across 2.9 days - and the mornings are still among the year's coolest, which matters when the plan is a sunrise at the temples. What regulars warn about is the dust, because months without rain leave the roads and the causeways powdery, and about the direction of travel: February is where the temperature begins its climb towards 39 or 40C by April. Tonle Sap still has enough water for the boat trips in this month, which stops being true later. It is high season, so the temples are busy. The record: 32.8C days that feel like 36C, 21.9C nights, humidity 61 percent and 10.6 hours of sun.

Cambodia's forum is generally upbeat about June: it's the start of the rainy season, but posters were clear it doesn't rain every day, and the rain actually helps take the edge off the heat. The typical pattern is an hour-long deluge that floods the street briefly before life carries on as normal - keep your phone and passport dry and expect it, not dread it. Battambang specifically sits inland, and forum posters noted coastal areas take the brunt of the wetter weather, so this stretch of the country generally sees less rain than the coast at the same time of year.

Forum posters describe December as a genuinely good time here - dry heat without the oppressive humidity of other months, blue skies, a slight breeze and cool mornings that call for a light jumper before warming up into T-shirt-and-shorts weather by day. Posters note this coincides with fishing season and the rice fields turning a golden yellow, with no rain or flooding to worry about. Posters are candid, though, that year-to-year variation is real - one visitor might be sweating at night while another is shivering, since Cambodia's cool season isn't perfectly consistent - but the overall consensus is that December ranks among the most pleasant, comfortable months to visit.