Why Not to Visit an Orphanage in Siem Reap, and What to Do Instead (2026)

Most children in Cambodian orphanages are not orphans, and the money and attention of visitors is the reason they are there. The Ministry of Social Affairs counted 16,579 children under 18 in 406 residential care institutions when it mapped the country in 2015, and its own statistics office found that 79 percent of the teenagers among them had at least one living parent. Siem Reap province had 80 of those institutions, more than any province except Phnom Penh. Tourist arrivals and orphanage numbers grew on the same curve for the same reason.

The question travelers type is “can I volunteer at an orphanage in Siem Reap,” and the pages that answer it are mostly written by the placement agencies that sell the week. They do not mention that the Cambodian government has spent a decade closing residential centers and sending children home, that UNICEF counted the children and young people in residential care falling from 35,000 to 10,000 between 2015 and 2022, or that the same logic covers the child selling postcards at Ta Prohm and the woman with a baby asking for milk powder on Pub Street. This guide covers all of it, then spends as long on the alternatives: the training restaurants, the workshops and the two mine-clearance museums where a visitor’s money reaches an adult with a job.

Figures, hours, prices and transport times below were checked against ministry and UNICEF reports, the APSARA National Authority’s published code of conduct and the organizations’ own websites in October 2026.

The Orphanage Is a Business Model, Not a Building

Every other guide treats an orphanage as a place that either is or is not well run. That is the wrong frame. A residential center in Siem Reap is a business whose revenue comes from foreign visitors and sponsors, and whose stock in trade is children. When the revenue depends on visitors, the center needs visitors, and to attract visitors it needs children who are visibly poor, visibly numerous and trained to perform for strangers. A good director in that model is still running that model.

The distinction that matters is between a program that keeps a child in a family and a program that houses a child instead of a family. Cambodia’s own policy, written in April 2006 and reaffirmed in a revised Alternative Care Policy in July 2024, says institutional care is to be used as a last resort when no family-based option exists. A visitor who walks through the gate with a bag of rice and a camera is voting against that policy with cash. That is true even when the children are genuinely without parents, because the center’s income depends on keeping them in the center rather than placing them with relatives or foster families.

The rest of this guide follows from that. The children selling bracelets at Bayon, the baby on Pub Street, the volunteer placement with a $900 program fee: each is a case of a child being used to collect money from a tourist, and in each case the honest advice is the same. Do not pay the child. Pay an adult with a job instead, and this guide names the adults.

What the Numbers Say

The 2015 mapping

The Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, with UNICEF and USAID, mapped every residential facility for children in Cambodia between November 2014 and December 2015 and published the report in 2017. It found 639 facilities housing 35,374 children and young people. Of those facilities, 406 were residential care institutions, the category most visitors would call orphanages, with 16,579 children under 18. Phnom Penh had 117 of them and Siem Reap had 80. Together the two provinces held 49 percent of the institutions and 51 percent of the children, 8,389 of them. Of Siem Reap’s 80 institutions, the ministry had inspection records for 52. The other 28 had been operating without the ministry knowing they existed. Nationally, 50 of the 406 institutions were registered with no branch of government at all.

The parents

The same report summarizes a National Institute of Statistics survey of children in residential care: 79 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds, just under four in five, reported at least one living parent. A 2013 ministry inspection had put the floor at 77 percent. Almost half of the children with a living parent said that parent lived in the same province as the center. The reasons recorded were poverty and access to education, not bereavement. A family in a village 30 minutes from Siem Reap places a child in a center because the center feeds the child, teaches English and has foreign sponsors, and because the recruiter said so. The global figure that ChildSafe cites is the same order of magnitude: more than 80 percent of an estimated 8 million children in institutions worldwide have a living parent.

The growth years

ConCERT Cambodia, the Siem Reap responsible-tourism NGO, publishes the earlier numbers that show the pattern. In 2005 Cambodia had 132 privately run orphanages. In 2010 it had 248, out of 269 in total. Over the same five years, the country had an estimated 553,000 orphans, and fewer than 1 percent of them lived in an orphanage. The institutions multiplied in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, the two cities where foreigners spend money, and not in the provinces where orphaned children actually were. That is the single fact that explains the sector.

What has changed since

The government responded to the mapping with a national action plan to return 30 percent of children in residential care to their families by 2018, starting in five priority provinces including Siem Reap. In July 2024 UNICEF Cambodia reported that about 10,000 children and young people remained in roughly 300 residential care facilities as of 2022, down from 35,000 in 600 in 2015, and announced the revised Alternative Care Policy that prioritizes reintegration, kinship care and foster care. The reduction is real, but it is uneven: a 2018 study found reintegrated children dropping out of school for lack of follow-up, and in 2025 an abrupt closure of 32 centers run by a single foreign faith-based organization sent more than 320 children home across 14 provinces with no transition support. The direction is clear. Visitors who keep paying centers to stay open are working against it.

Why a Visit Does Harm Even When the Orphanage Is Real

The first harm is to attachment. A child who meets a new set of adults every week, is hugged, photographed and then abandoned when the tuk-tuk leaves, learns that adult affection is brief and transactional. Child development research on institutional care, which the ministry’s own report cites, links that experience to problems that last into adulthood. ConCERT puts it bluntly on its orphanages page: children who rush to hug strangers may be showing distress, not affection.

The second harm is to safety. A center that admits any visitor who turns up at the gate has no screening, no supervision of adult-child contact and no record of who was there. That is precisely the environment that people who want unsupervised access to children look for, and ChildSafe’s Tip 5 exists because it happens in Siem Reap. Any institution for children in a wealthy country would refuse a walk-in visitor on sight, and the ChildSafe test is to ask why the standard should differ in Cambodia.

The third harm is economic, and it is the one visitors underestimate. Money given to a center is money not given to the village the children came from. ConCERT’s position is that every dollar spent housing a child away from a family is a dollar that could have kept the family together through school fees, food support or a parent’s job. The Green Gecko Project, which for 20 years ran programs for former street children in Siem Reap, completed a planned transition in 2025 away from on-site programs and direct family support and now funds only scholarships for its last students finishing tertiary study. That is what a responsible organization in this sector looks like at the end: smaller, then gone, with the children in families.

Volunteering With Children: The Short Answer Is No

The placement industry

The typical offer is one to four weeks teaching English or “helping out” at a center, with a program fee of several hundred to a few thousand dollars paid to an agency abroad, of which the center sees a fraction. The volunteer needs no qualification, no background check and no Khmer. No school in the volunteer’s home country would allow that person into a classroom. ChildSafe’s Tip 2 reads: volunteering with children can cause harm, and work with children in institutions is best left to local experts. The attachment problem above applies with more force to someone who stays three weeks than to someone who stays three hours.

If you have skills to share

The responsible version exists and is slower. ConCERT Cambodia, founded in Siem Reap in November 2008 and based at the Treak Community Centre about 4 km from town, 15 minutes by tuk-tuk, places volunteers with around 20 local projects according to what the project needs rather than what the volunteer wants. Its office hours are Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Anyone it places with children must first take its child protection workshop, $15 including morning refreshments, run in English. ConCERT advises sharing professional skills with local staff, a nurse training nurses, a carpenter training carpenters, rather than working directly with children. The limitation: ConCERT is small, says plainly that it does not comment on other projects, and the useful placements are weeks long, not a Tuesday afternoon between temples. A traveler with three days in Siem Reap does the most good by spending money in the places listed below.

Children Selling and Begging at Angkor and on Pub Street

At the temples

The children at Ta Prohm, Bayon, the Banteay Srei parking lot and the Angkor Wat causeway sell bracelets ten for a dollar, postcards, magnets and bamboo flutes, and some will count to ten in whatever language you answer in. The APSARA National Authority’s Visitor Code of Conduct, posted at angkorenterprise.gov.kh, says this: buying items or giving candy or money to children encourages them not to attend school but to beg, and asks visitors who want to help to donate to a recognized charity instead. The nuance ChildSafe adds is fair. Cambodian public schools run in two shifts, so a child selling at 10:00 a.m. may be an afternoon-shift student helping parents, and many are. That does not change the advice, because the purchase rewards whoever placed the child at the gate, and a child who earns $5 before lunch has every reason to skip the afternoon shift. If you want to buy a krama or a carving in the park, buy it from the adult stall behind the children. The Angkor dress code and park rules guide covers the rest of the code of conduct.

On Pub Street after dark

Between 7:00 p.m. and midnight, children work the restaurant terraces of Pub Street and the Old Market lanes selling photocopied books, bracelets and roses, and smaller children beg outright. The same rule applies and the same reason: a child making money on Pub Street at 11:00 p.m. is not in school at 7:00 a.m. ChildSafe’s Tip 4 adds the reporting step. If a bar or restaurant appears to employ a child, tell the Siem Reap ChildSafe hotline on +855 17 358 758 rather than confronting the owner.

The powdered milk scam

A woman, sometimes a girl, holding a sleepy infant approaches a table and asks not for money but for formula for the baby. She walks you to a specific minimart or pharmacy near the bottom of Pub Street, you pay $20 to $30 for a tin, and after you leave the shop buys the tin back and splits the money with her. The babies are often borrowed for the night. ChildSafe launched a campaign against the scheme in 2013, and its undercover observations around Pub Street in April and May 2018 found the number of operators falling because of CCTV, police attention and awareness posters, and the remaining ones moving to smaller unmonitored streets at mealtimes and late at night. It has not disappeared. Decline politely. If the baby appears ill or drugged, call the hotline. The Siem Reap scams guide covers the other schemes that work on the same street.

Why not give anyway

The usual objection is that a dollar costs the visitor nothing and might buy the child dinner. The answer from every organization working with these children is the same: the dollar goes to the adult running the child, it keeps the child on the street or at the gate instead of in a classroom, and it tells the next family that a child at Angkor is worth more than a child at school. Giving feels good for the giver. The cost lands on the child.

Cambodian Law and Policy, in One Box

Policy on Alternative Care for Children, April 2006. Institutional care is a last resort and a temporary solution. Family and community-based care are the preferred options.

Prakas 616 of 2006 and Prakas 198 of 2008. Minimum Standards on Alternative Care for Children, for residential care and for community-based care. They set staffing, complaint and child protection requirements and penalties.

Sub-Decree 119 of 11 September 2015 on the Management of Residential Care Centres. Every center must notify and seek authorization from the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, which inspects annually. Before this, orphanages answered to several ministries or to none.

National Action Plan for Improving Child Care, 2016 to 2018. Target of safely returning 30 percent of children in residential care to their families in five priority provinces, including Siem Reap.

Revised Alternative Care Policy, July 2024. Reaffirms institutional care as a last resort and prioritizes reintegration, kinship care and foster care.

Angkor Visitor Code of Conduct, APSARA National Authority. Prohibits revealing clothing in sacred places, bans smoking across the park since 2012, asks visitors to seek permission before photographing monks, and asks them not to buy from or give money or candy to children.

Labor and trafficking law. The Cambodian Labor Law sets the minimum working age at 15, with light work permitted from 12. The 2008 Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation criminalizes the sexual exploitation of children. Reports go to the police or the ChildSafe hotline.

None of these laws stop a center from accepting a visitor, and enforcement in the provinces is thin. The point is that the Cambodian state has already decided what it wants for these children, and it is not more orphanages.

What to Do Instead: Places Checked and Open

The alternative to visiting children is paying adults, and Siem Reap has a deeper bench of social enterprises than any city its size in Southeast Asia. Each entry below was confirmed operating in 2025 or 2026 from the organization’s own site. The full list, with menus and the ones that did not make this cut, is in the social enterprise restaurants and shops guide.

Phare, the Cambodian Circus

The honest verdict: the best single hour you can spend in Siem Reap, and the clearest case of ticket money reaching the right place. The big top is on Ring Road, 10 minutes and $3 to $4 by tuk-tuk from Pub Street. Pre-show food and the boutique open at 5:30 p.m., the show starts at 8:00 p.m. year-round and runs about an hour, and from November 2026 through March 2027 a 5:00 p.m. matinee runs on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Adult tickets are $38 in Section A, reserved front seating with a souvenir, $28 in Section B and $18 in Section C, and children 5 to 11 pay $18, $15 and $10. Check in 30 minutes before, because nobody is admitted once the show starts. The performers are students and graduates of Phare Ponleu Selpak, a non-profit arts school in Battambang, and the Siem Reap company exists to fund it. The limitation: it is acrobatic theater with a storyline, not Khmer classical dance, and in December and January the cheap sections sell out two days ahead. The Phare guide compares the current productions.

Phare Ponleu Selpak, Battambang

If the show makes you want to see the school, it is 3 hours west by road and the Battambang day trip is the way to do it. Campus tours run Monday to Friday at 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., last an hour, cost $5 per person for groups under five and $3 for six or more, and are given in Khmer, English or French. The school does not accept visitors outside those slots, publishes a visitor code of conduct, and asks for school-appropriate dress. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays there is an evening circus show on campus. The limitation: this is a working school with 1,000-plus students, so the tour is a walk past classrooms, not an interaction with children, and that is the design.

Artisans Angkor

Verdict: the easiest responsible hour in town, and free. The workshops are on Stung Thmey Street, a five-minute walk west of the Old Market, and visitors walk through the stone carving, wood carving, lacquer and silk painting workshops with a guide at no charge, then exit through the shop. Guided workshop tours run daily from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and the boutique stays open later. The Angkor Silk Farm at Puok, 16 km west on National Road 6, shows the full process from mulberry to loom and opens daily 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Artisans Angkor grew out of a 1990s vocational program for rural young people and now employs more than a thousand artisans in workshops across Siem Reap province. The limitation: prices in the shop are three to five times what the same motif costs at the Old Market, which is the point and also the reason to look before you buy. The Artisans Angkor and silk farm guide covers what is worth the premium.

Haven

Verdict: the training restaurant that most reliably delivers both a good dinner and a real program. Haven is on Chocolate Road in Sangkat Sala Kamreuk, across the river on the Wat Damnak side, a 10-minute walk or 5-minute tuk-tuk from the Old Market. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., the kitchen closes at 9:30 p.m., and it closes on Mondays and for three days at Pchum Ben in late September or October. Trainees are young adults leaving shelters and youth from rural provinces, a new cohort joins each year, and meal sales fund the program. Reserve by phone or at eat@havencambodia.com. The restaurant does not publish prices online. Expect $6 to $12 for a main based on the comparable training restaurants. The limitation: tables go a week or more ahead in high season, and because the staff are learning, service is earnest and slow.

Spoons

Verdict: a Cambodian menu, a Cambodian-run organization and a proper training restaurant. Spoons Cafe and Restaurant sits on the Wat Bo side, a few hundred meters from the 7 Makara Street and Wat Bo Road junction, 5 minutes by tuk-tuk from Pub Street. All restaurant profit funds the Spoons Cambodia Organization and its hospitality students. The site does not publish opening hours, so reserve on +855 76 277 6667 or at reservations@spoonscambodia.org before setting out. Prices are not published either. Expect the same $6 to $12 range for a main. The limitation: the address is a residential lane that drivers know by the directions rather than the name, so have the phone number ready for the tuk-tuk.

Sala Bai Hotel and Restaurant School

Verdict: the best-value sit-down lunch in Siem Reap, with a catch on the calendar. Sala Bai, in the Wat Svay area west of Sivatha Boulevard, 5 minutes by tuk-tuk from Pub Street, trains young Cambodians from poor families in hotel and restaurant work, and its restaurant is the practical classroom. Lunch is served Monday to Friday from noon, with the full set menu of starter, main and dessert at $14.50 and a half menu at $12, and reservations are made through salabai.com. The school year runs from roughly November to the end of June, and the restaurant closes from mid-July to November. The limitation: that closure covers the whole shoulder season, and a Saturday lunch is never possible.

APOPO Visitor Center

Verdict: the hour that explains Cambodia’s landmines better than any museum, with a live demonstration. The center is at Trapeang Ses village on Koumai Road, 15 minutes by tuk-tuk from Pub Street, and opens daily 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the last tour at 4:30 p.m. Tours cost $10, children under 10 are free, and a visit takes about an hour, during which a trained African giant pouched rat finds a deactivated mine in a sand pit. Book online in advance, because tours sell out. The limitation: the demonstration is short and the rest is a guided talk, so children under eight lose interest.

Cambodia Landmine Museum

Verdict: worth the detour on the way to Banteay Srei, and only on that day. Aki Ra’s museum is 25 km north on the Banteay Srei road, about 45 minutes by tuk-tuk from town and $20 round trip, or 30 minutes by car. It opens daily 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., foreign adults pay $7, Khmer adults $2.50, children under 13 are free, cash is preferred, and no Angkor Pass is needed. Audio tours run via QR code, and a guided tour in English or Khmer must be booked 48 hours ahead. Admission funds demining and mine-risk education. The limitation: the museum has housed children affected by landmines on the same site for years, and they are not part of the visit. If a guide offers to introduce you to them, decline. The Landmine Museum and APOPO guide compares the two.

Also worth knowing

Friends-International’s Siem Reap program, Kaliyan Mith, runs the ChildSafe hotline, a drop-in center, outreach and hospitality training. Its training restaurant Marum, between Wat Polanka and the Catholic church on the road to the temples, closed through the pandemic and reopened in October 2024 under the name F3, with a nail salon and a shop beside the restaurant. Current listings give Monday to Saturday, 5:00 to 9:30 p.m., while the Friends-International site still shows older hours, so call before going. HUSK Cambodia, a small NGO working in Kompheim village east of town since 2008, runs a women’s sewing project that received outside funding in 2025 and arranges village stays and work experience by prior contact, not drop-in. Angkor Hospital for Children treats children from across the northwest free of charge and takes donations at angkorhospital.org. Neither hospital nor NGO is a place to visit, and that is the pattern: the organizations that are doing the work do not want you at the door.

How to Give Money That Helps

1. Give to a program, not a child. ConCERT’s advice, repeated on its donation page, is that sponsoring an individual child is a recognized problem. Fund a teacher’s salary, a classroom’s rent or a year of school supplies instead.
2. Give to health. Angkor Hospital for Children publishes its patient numbers each year and takes donations online. Blood donation is possible at Siem Reap’s two children’s hospitals, and ConCERT lists it as one of the most useful things a healthy visitor can do.
3. Eat and shop where the staff are the program. A $14.50 lunch at Sala Bai, a dinner at Haven or Spoons, a $38 seat at Phare and a lacquer bowl at Artisans Angkor all pay an adult who is training for a trade or already has one.
4. Use the hotline for what it is for. +855 17 358 758 is for a child who appears ill, drugged, exploited or working in a bar, not for arranging a visit. Email reports go to report@thinkchildsafe.org.
5. Look for the ChildSafe logo. Hotels, tuk-tuk drivers and restaurants certified by the ChildSafe Movement have been trained to recognize and report child exploitation, and the logo is a reasonable tiebreaker between two otherwise similar businesses.
6. Bring nothing for the children. Pens, candy and used clothes handed to children at a school gate recreate the begging economy in miniature. If a school or project you have a real connection to asks for materials, deliver them to the teacher.

Tipping an adult who has served you well is a different matter and a good one. The tipping in Cambodia guide gives the amounts.

Temples and Pagodas: The Etiquette That Matters

The rules are the same at Angkor and in every working pagoda in town, and they are enforced at Angkor Wat’s upper level, Bakan, where guards turn away bare shoulders and knees without discussion. Cover shoulders and knees, men and women. Remove shoes and hats before entering a vihara and leave them on the step. Sit with feet tucked away from the Buddha image, never pointed at it or at a monk. Do not touch a monk if you are a woman, and ask anyone before photographing them, especially monks. Keep your voice down, do not touch carvings or sit on fallen stones, and do not climb on anything with a rope around it. Smoking has been prohibited across the park since 2012. Selfie sticks and tripods are discouraged inside the temples. In a pagoda, a small note left in the donation box is appropriate and expected. Giving money to monks directly is not. The temple etiquette guide covers the Pchum Ben and Khmer New Year specifics, and the dress code guide covers what actually gets you turned away at the gate.

Water and Plastic

Siem Reap has no municipal recycling to speak of, and a visitor who buys three 500 ml bottles a day for four days leaves twelve bottles in a landfill or a canal. The practical fix costs nothing. Most hotels above hostel level now provide filtered water in the room or a dispenser in the lobby, and the ones that charge for it should be asked why. Carry one bottle and refill it. The Refill Not Landfill campaign, started in Siem Reap in October 2016 by hoteliers, sells aluminum bottles and lists refill points, including at Phare’s boutique on show nights, but its online map has not been updated for several years, so treat the hotel dispenser as the reliable source. Tap water is not drinkable. Ice in restaurants is factory-made and safe. The drinking water and plastic guide lists the hotels with a stated refill policy and the cafes that give free refills.

Elephants, Briefly

Elephant rides inside the Angkor park ended at the start of 2020, after two decades of carrying tourists up Phnom Bakheng and around Bayon, and the animals were retired to a forest reserve in the Phnom Kulen foothills. That single change removed the most visible animal-welfare problem in Siem Reap. Anything that still offers riding, bathing with elephants, painting elephants or a show is not ethical regardless of what the brochure says. The criteria that distinguish a sanctuary from a camp are specific: no riding, no performances, no bull hooks, a documented origin for each animal, forest large enough for the elephants to walk and forage, and published accounts. The ethical elephants guide applies those criteria to what exists within a day of Siem Reap, and to the Mondulkiri sanctuaries eight hours away as a point of comparison.

By Situation

You have been invited to an orphanage by a tuk-tuk driver or a hotel

Decline. The invitation is a commission arrangement, and a center that recruits visitors through drivers is the kind this guide describes. Spend the afternoon at Artisans Angkor and the evening at Phare instead, and tip the driver for the ride.

You have two weeks and want to volunteer

Contact ConCERT Cambodia in advance, take the $15 child protection workshop, and accept a placement matched to your profession rather than to children. Two weeks of teaching a Cambodian teacher new material outlasts two weeks of teaching children who will forget your name.

You are traveling with children and want them to see how other children live

Phare’s 5:00 p.m. matinee in the dry season, a Sala Bai lunch, and the APOPO Visitor Center cover the ground without turning Cambodian children into the exhibit. The Siem Reap with kids guide builds the day around them.

You want to give a meaningful amount of money

Angkor Hospital for Children, online, or a program ConCERT points you to that funds a salary or a classroom. Not a child, not a center, not a bag of rice at a gate.

You have been approached on Pub Street tonight

Say no to the milk, no to the books and no to the bracelet. If the baby looks limp or the child looks hurt, call +855 17 358 758 from the table and let the people whose job it is handle it.

You want a souvenir that pays a Cambodian adult fairly

Artisans Angkor on Stung Thmey Street, the Made in Cambodia market and the shops listed in the souvenirs guide, and nothing bought from a child at a temple gate.

What It Actually Costs

Item	Price	Includes	Notes
Phare, the Cambodian Circus	$18, $28 or $38 adult, $10 to $18 child	One-hour show, 8:00 p.m. nightly	Tuk-tuk $3 to $4 each way, drivers wait
Phare Ponleu Selpak campus tour, Battambang	$5 per person, $3 in groups of six or more	One-hour tour, weekdays 8:30 a.m. or 2:30 p.m.	Plus a Battambang day trip, 3 hours each way
Artisans Angkor workshops	Free	Guided walk through the workshops	Silk Farm at Puok free, 16 km west
Haven	Mains not published, expect $6 to $12	Dinner, Tuesday to Sunday	Reserve a week ahead in high season
Spoons	Mains not published, expect $6 to $12	Lunch or dinner	Reserve by phone, hours not published
Sala Bai lunch	$14.50 set menu, $12 half menu	Starter, main, dessert	Weekdays only, closed mid-July to November
APOPO Visitor Center	$10, under 10 free	One-hour tour with rat demonstration	Book online, last tour 4:30 p.m.
Cambodia Landmine Museum	$7 adult, under 13 free	Audio tour via QR code	Tuk-tuk about $20 round trip, no Angkor Pass needed
ConCERT child protection workshop	$15	Half-day workshop with refreshments	Required before any placement with children
ChildSafe hotline	Free	Report a child at risk	+855 17 358 758, Siem Reap
Orphanage visit or placement	$0 to several thousand dollars	A child’s attachment, a center’s incentive to recruit	Do not pay it

Dollars are accepted everywhere and small change comes back in riel at about 4,000 to the dollar. Torn or old dollar bills are refused, so keep the clean ones for ticket windows. A full day of the alternatives above, Artisans Angkor in the morning, Sala Bai at noon, APOPO in the afternoon and Phare at night, comes to about $65 per adult plus $15 in tuk-tuks, which is less than the cheapest weeklong orphanage placement fee and does more good. The daily budget guide sets that against the rest of a Siem Reap day.

What Other Guides Get Wrong

1. Listing “good orphanages” to visit. There is no good orphanage to visit, because the visit is the harm. The organizations that are run well do not let visitors in, and the ones that do are telling you something.
2. Quoting the 80 percent figure as a global rumor. For Cambodia it is a government number: 79 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds in residential care have a living parent according to the National Institute of Statistics, and the ministry’s 2013 inspection put the floor at 77 percent.
3. Treating the Pub Street children and the orphanage question as separate topics. They are the same economy. A child at a gate, a child with a book, a baby on a hip and a child in a center performing for visitors are all children being used to extract money from tourists, and the fix is identical.
4. Saying “buy from the children, at least they are working, not begging.” The APSARA National Authority’s own code of conduct says buying from children at Angkor keeps them out of school. The adult stall ten meters behind them sells the same krama.
5. Framing short-term volunteering as a trade-off between some good and some harm. Cambodia’s child protection organizations, and the government’s alternative care policy, treat unskilled short-term work with institutionalized children as harm without an offsetting good. The useful volunteer trains adults.
6. Leaving the alternatives vague. “Support local social enterprises” is not advice. The advice is Phare at 8:00 p.m., Sala Bai at noon on a weekday, Haven on Chocolate Road Tuesday to Sunday, APOPO before 4:30 p.m., and a donation to a hospital that publishes its numbers.

Detailed Guides

• Temple etiquette in Cambodia: what to wear, where to put your feet and how to behave around monks, in the park and in the town pagodas, including Pchum Ben and New Year.
• Social enterprise restaurants and shops in Siem Reap: which training restaurants and workshops are genuinely programs and which have borrowed the vocabulary, with menus and hours.
• Drinking water and plastic in Siem Reap: the hotels with a refill policy, the cafes that refill for free and what happens to a plastic bottle after you leave.
• Elephants near Siem Reap: the criteria that separate a sanctuary from a camp, applied to what exists within a day of Siem Reap and to Mondulkiri.
• Siem Reap scams to avoid: the milk powder scheme, the fake Angkor ticket, the tuk-tuk detour and the others that still work on Pub Street.
• The Landmine Museum and APOPO: which of the two mine-clearance visits to choose, how to combine the museum with Banteay Srei, and what the admission funds.
• Artisans Angkor and the Silk Farm: what the free workshop visit shows, whether the Puok silk farm is worth the 16 km, and what the shop premium buys.
• Tipping in Cambodia: what to leave a guide, a driver, a server and a spa therapist, and why a tip to an adult is the right instinct that a dollar to a child is not.

Where to Go Next

The money a visitor does not give at an orphanage gate still has to go somewhere, and the best next read is the social enterprise restaurants and shops guide, which turns the list above into dinners. For the park itself, the Angkor Pass guide explains where the ticket money goes and the Angkor dress code and rules covers the code of conduct the child-vendor rule belongs to. The one evening that answers almost every question in this guide is Phare, the Cambodian Circus, and anyone with a day to spare should take it to Battambang to see the school the show pays for.