Phnom Penh With Children: What to Do, and What to Leave Out

Phnom Penh is a harder city for children than Siem Reap - it is hot, flat, and most of what adults come for is heavy. But there is a real day here.

A boat on the Mekong is the easiest win. The city sits where three rivers meet, boats leave the quay all evening, an hour costs very little, and being on the water is a break from the heat as well as a sight. Sunset is the time.

Koh Dach, the silk island, a short ferry upstream. Flat, green, almost no traffic, weavers working handlooms under the houses, and in the dry season sandbanks along the edge that local families picnic on. By bike it is a proper day out. See the silk island guide.

The Royal Palace holds up better with children than you would expect - the Silver Pagoda's floor is literally five thousand silver tiles and the gold Buddha has two thousand diamonds in it, both of which are facts a child can do something with. Shoulders and knees covered applies to them too, and it is a lot of walking in the sun, so go at opening.

Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre, about 40 km south, takes in animals confiscated from the illegal trade - elephants, bears, gibbons, tigers. It is a genuine rescue operation rather than a zoo with a good story. A full day with the drive.

The Central Market's art deco dome is cool underneath and full of things to look at.

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek are not suitable for young children, and both sites say so.

S-21 has room after room of intake photographs of people who were about to be killed, the cells and the iron bed frames, and images of what was done there. Choeung Ek is a field of excavated mass graves with a stupa of around 5,000 skulls arranged by age and injury, and fragments of bone and cloth still surface in the paths after rain.

There is no version of this that is child-appropriate below about twelve, and nothing is gained by trying.

Teenagers who have been prepared usually manage well and often take more from it than the adults do. Prepare them: what happened, roughly when, why it is there. The Choeung Ek audio guide, narrated in part by a survivor, does a lot of that work and is what makes the site legible rather than just grim.

The practical answer for a family is to split. One parent takes the Khmer Rouge sites in the afternoon while the other does the palace, the river or the market with the children, and swap the next day if there is one. That is what most families here actually do.

Do not take a small child and stay outside with them either - it is half a day of standing in a car park.

The heat is the thing that decides whether a family day in Phnom Penh works.

Almost everything here is outdoors and unshaded, and from March to May it is high thirties with thick humidity. Children overheat faster than adults and say so later than is useful.

The workable shape: out at eight, one thing, back by eleven-thirty. Indoors or in the pool from twelve to three - this is non-negotiable in the hot months, not a nice-to-have. Out again at four for the market, the street art or the river, and eat early.

A pool is part of the itinerary, not a luxury. Filter for one before anything else - see where to stay, where BKK1 has most of the mid-range hotels with pools and is quiet at night.

November to February is a different city - mid-twenties mornings and a bearable afternoon. If you have any choice of dates with children, take these months.

Traffic. Crossings work by walking steadily and letting traffic flow around you, which is alarming with a small child. Hold hands, cross with a local if you can, and use tuk-tuks freely - they cost a couple of dollars and remove the problem.

Mosquitoes. Dengue is present and Phnom Penh is an urban dengue environment. Repellent at dusk, covered ankles.

Orphanage visits. Do not go, and decline any tour that offers one. Paid visits to institutions housing children cause documented harm: they turn children into an attraction, expose them to a stream of strangers, and the money has demonstrably driven children into institutions who have living parents. Cambodia has been a centre of this problem and reputable operators stopped offering it years ago. If a driver or a guide suggests it, say no and mean it.

The same applies to volunteering at one for a day, to "visiting a village school" as a paid stop, and to buying milk powder or supplies from a shop somebody leads you to.

Giving money to begging children. It is the hardest one because the impulse is decent. Cambodian NGOs are unanimous: money given to a child on the street makes that child an earning asset and keeps them out of school, and organised begging exists here. Give to an organisation working on it instead.

ChildSafe is the Cambodian network to know about - posters are everywhere and there is a hotline for concerns. Use it rather than intervening yourself.

What to do instead, if you want the money to land: the wildlife centre, the arts schools, Cambodian-run social enterprises and the training restaurants that teach hospitality to young people from hard backgrounds. Several of those cook as well as anywhere in the city, which makes it an easy choice.