Cambodia with children: 10 days built around the heat
Two things govern a Cambodian family trip and neither is on most itineraries. The first is temperature: children hit their limit in the heat well before adults do, and a temple at one in the afternoon is a bad experience for everybody. The second is that the two things Cambodia is most known for int
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb
- From
- $1,600 per person
So this route does two temple mornings rather than three temple days, keeps every afternoon free with a pool at the end of it, and handles Phnom Penh differently depending on how old your children are. Three hotel changes in ten days. One short flight.
Who it suits: families with children roughly 5 to 16. Under 5 is workable and we build it differently, with fewer sites and a longer coastal stay.
Your specialist: Osnat Angerman or Paz Prosianoy, with our Hanoi office on the ground.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Siem Reap. Private transfer, about an hour from the airport. Nothing at all scheduled. A hotel with a real pool and a family room or two connecting rooms, which in Siem Reap is easy to arrange and worth insisting on.
Day 2: Angkor, morning one. Out at opening with a guide who is good with children, which is a specific request we make and not an assumption. Angkor Thom and the Bayon, where the faces are the thing children remember, then Ta Prohm, which is the temple with the trees growing through it and which every child under fifteen calls the jungle one. Back at the hotel by half past eleven. The rest of the day is the pool.
Day 3: Angkor, morning two, and the circus. Angkor Wat itself, early, with the guide telling the churning of the ocean of milk from the bas relief rather than reciting dates. Ninety minutes inside is plenty. Then out to the countryside for a quad or ox cart ride through the rice fields depending on ages, and back before lunch. Evening at Phare, the Cambodian circus: acrobatics, live band, a story, one hour, and the single most reliable hit of the whole trip for children of any age.
Day 4: Tonle Sap and free time. Boat out to Kampong Khleang, the stilted village where houses stand thirty feet above you in the dry season and at water level in the wet. Children generally find it more interesting than any temple. Back by lunch, then the afternoon free. Optional: the Cambodia Landmine Museum, which is small, well explained and appropriate for children over about ten.
Day 5: Fly to Phnom Penh. A 45-minute flight after a slow morning. Afternoon at the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, which is short, shaded in parts and visually spectacular, then the riverfront at dusk when half the city is out exercising.
Day 6: Phnom Penh, two versions. This is the day we build around your family rather than around the city.
With teenagers: Tuol Sleng in the morning with the audio guide, after a proper conversation the night before about what it is, with permission to leave at any point. It is one of the most important things a teenager can see in Asia. Choeung Ek only if the morning has gone well. Quiet afternoon afterwards, nothing scheduled.
With younger children: we do not take them. Instead we arrange the morning so one parent visits while the other is at the National Museum or the market with the children, and swap the following morning if you both want to go. Nobody has to skip it and no eight-year-old has to see it.
Either way the afternoon is deliberately empty.
Day 7: Phnom Penh to Kep. Three hours south, mostly on good road. Kep is small, has a swimming beach, a crab market and very little else, and after six days of structure that is exactly right. Afternoon in the sea.
Day 8: Kep and Rabbit Island. Twenty minutes by boat to Koh Tonsay, which has a beach, hammocks, grilled seafood and no traffic. Back in the afternoon, or a pepper farm near Kampot instead if the children have had enough sand, where they get to taste four kinds of pepper and generally decide they have opinions about pepper.
Day 9: Kep, free. Nothing scheduled. Swimming, the crab market, the abandoned villas along the shore road, cycling. This day is not filler, it is the day that makes the flight home survivable.
Day 10: Kep to departure. Two and a half hours to Phnom Penh airport, or on to Sihanoukville port for island nights if you are extending.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout in family rooms or connecting rooms, the Siem Reap to Phnom Penh flight, private air-conditioned car with driver on all transfers and site days, licensed guides briefed for children on three days, the three-day Angkor pass, the Tonle Sap boat, Phare circus tickets, the Rabbit Island boat, entrance fees on guided days, a day-by-day document with drive times, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hanoi office throughout.
What we would change, and when
- Children under 5? Drop one Angkor morning and add a night at Kep. Two temple mornings become one and nobody minds.
- Travelling in the hot season? We will tell you not to, for a family trip, between mid-March and May. If your dates are fixed we cut every site day to a morning, add a night, and choose hotels for the shade and the pool rather than the location.
- Want an island? Two nights on Koh Rong Sanloem instead of two at Kep. The boat crossing is 30 to 45 minutes and can be rough, which is worth knowing with small children.
- Older teenagers who want more? Add two days in Battambang for the circus school itself, where they can do a workshop rather than only watch.
Honest notes
Cambodia is hot, and it is hot in a way that a British or American summer is not. In the dry season, from about eleven in the morning until three in the afternoon, outdoor sightseeing with children does not work. This itinerary is not lazy, it is built around a real constraint, and families who ignore it end the trip early.
The genocide sites are not optional to Cambodia’s story and they are also not suitable for young children. We have seen families take a seven-year-old into Tuol Sleng because it was on the schedule. Please do not. The split-morning arrangement above costs nothing and solves it.
Two temple mornings is enough at this age. Adults regularly want a third and children almost never do, and a third morning usually buys a photograph and a bad afternoon.
Built by Osnat Angerman, our Southeast and Central Asia specialist, and checked by our Hanoi office before it goes out.
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