The Best Things to Do with Kids in Siem Reap
We spent a full week in Siem Reap and had an amazing time — it’s such a vibrant city, and so much more than just a bedroom community for visits to the Angkor Archaeological Park. Here are some of our favourite things to do in Siem Reap:
Explore the Angkor Temples
So let’s get the obvious one out of the way up front, as in all likelihood you are in Siem Reap to explore Angokor Wat and the various temples throughout the Angkor Archaeological Park. We bought three-day passes for Angkor, and chose to do private tours of the temples in remorques (i.e. four-seater trailers pulled by motor bikes that are basically big tuk tuks). We booked our drivers on Klook at a cost of 15 USD for a full-day tour, which included visits to five or six different temples and bottled water for the whole family.
We did two of these tours during our week in Siem Reap, which allowed us to visit most of the main temples as well as some of the less busy ones. We were able to modify our itineraries with our drivers based on our preferences, so if you want to see a particular temple, just work it out with your driver up front.
Despite these being full-day tours (i.e. 8 am to 4:30 pm), we were picked up at our hotel at 8 am and headed back around 1:00 both days. The temples are amazing, but most have little to no shade and climbing up and down stairs and clambering over ruins in such oppressive heat tires you out after a while.
Many people will likely tell you to get a guide or take a guided tour of the temples, but we were so happy we didn’t. There is zero chance our kids would have been able to just stand around in the heat listening to the guides talk, and to be honest most of the adults we saw on guided tours looked absolutely wiped from the heat and not engaged in listening, as interesting as the history was. Not having a guide also meant that we could do the temples more quickly and see more of them in a day. Obviously you lose some of the educational aspect doing it this way, but this was definitely the right balance for our family.
The main cost of doing Angkor is really the admission ticket, which set us back 62 USD per adult for a three-day ticket, which can be used over a period of 10 days and does not have to be used on successive days. Kids under 12 don’t require tickets and can visit the Angkor temples for free, but make sure you bring their passports with you just in case you need to show proof of their ages. (We never did, but our kids are young enough that no one would mistake them for being over 12.)
You can read more about our experience at Angkor here.
Test Your Golf Skills at Angkor Wat Putt
One morning during our week in Siem Reap, we decided to visit Angkor Wat Putt — it had great reviews on Google and was only a 15-minute tuk tuk ride outside of the city. It’s maybe not what you would expect to do somewhere like Cambodia, where there are so many opportunities for rich cultural experiences, but for us it was a welcome bit of western-style fun after a few months of day-to-day life in South East Asia.
The course was a good diversion for the kids and largely shaded by tree cover, so it’s a great way to beat the heat. It’s very well set up, and has replicas of a number of the Angkor region temples incorporated into the holes. It was a fun course with some challenging holes and definitely worth a visit if you want to take a break from exploring the temples.
For our family of two adults and two children, it cost under 20 USD for a full round of 14 holes, plus a few dollars each way for the tuk tuk rides to and from the city. Our tuk tuk driver basically insisted on waiting around for us until we were finished — tuk tuk drivers in town seemed desperate for work — so we agreed to this and just tipped him a bit extra for the return trip. We booked our tuk tuk to the mini golf course on Grab for the security and to avoid the negotiation process.
Take a Gelato Break
Astute readers will likely notice that a lot of these activities on this list are about beating the heat (Siem Reap in December is HOT!), and what better way to do with little ones than by taking a pit stop for some gelato?
Gelato Lab just off Pub Street had some fantastic and very high-quality gelato, but the true showstopper was when you opted into one of their freshly made waffle cones, which are served still warm off the griddle. Loads of delicious kid- and parent-approved flavors, from artisan chocolate to salted caramel to passion fruit, paired with fresh waffle cones in a cute setting either inside or on their patio makes for a nice cooling diversion.
The price for a cone or cup is approximately 1.50 USD per person for a single scoop. And if Mom or Dad also want something cool but aren’t feeling gelato, Shack Coffee, which has some great cold caffeinated beverages, is right down the street.
Hit the Pool
We were lucky that our hotel had a few different pools that allowed us to cool off in the water with our kids each afternoon, which was always welcome after a morning of exploring temples or walking around the city.
If your hotel doesn’t have a pool, we did notice that some of the hotels near the Heritage Walk mall seemed to offer free pool access with the purchase of a meal. Definitely worth looking in to if your accommodation doesn’t have a pool and your kids are little fish like ours are.
Head to the Cinema
Our family also likes to beat the heat by checking out a movie every once in a while, especially when we are somewhere hot, and when we haven’t had a chance to go to a movie for a while since we’ve been staying in more remote areas that don’t have cinemas.
In Siem Reap, a regular matinee showing cost us 10 USD for 2 adults and 2 children at Legend Cinemas in Heritage Walk. The theater experience felt more premium than the theater experience back in North America and there were lots of films to see in English. Be warned that 3D movies cost a little more, around 14 USD for two adults and two kids.