What We Actually Paid: Our Monthly Total

Our total spend in Cambodia for four weeks came to £2,600.18 for a family of four. Here is how that broke down:

The cost of food surprised us the most here as whilst Cambodia can be very cheap to eat out, we chose to cook many meals at our apartment due to feeling like we needed some home comforts. Siem Reap, where we spent two weeks, had some fantastic supermarkets but they came at a price due to the vast majority of produce being imported. So this category can be done for much cheaper, however, be wary you will be spending most of your time eating in super local eateries.

Accommodation

Cambodia has a wide range of accommodation at every price point, and the gap between what you’d pay through a platform and what you’d pay booking directly is more pronounced here than almost anywhere else in the region.

In Siem Reap, a comfortable guesthouse room for a family – air conditioning, reliable wifi, private bathroom, breakfast included – runs roughly £35–55 per night at mid-range. If you want apartment-style accommodation with a kitchen, budget £600–900 per month for something decent. Tourist-facing hotels in the centre command more; quieter streets a few blocks back are noticeably cheaper.

In Phnom Penh, serviced apartments aimed at expats and long-stay visitors are more available than in Siem Reap, and the quality-to-price ratio is generally good. Expect £700–1,100 per month for a two-bedroom apartment in a central but not prime location.

Kampot and the south, if you are doing a slower pace, runs considerably cheaper – £400–650 per month for a house or bungalow is realistic, and the pace of life suits families who want a base rather than constant movement.

Location 1 was a two bedroom apartment in Siem Reap for £31.30 per night.

Location 2 was a one bedroom hotel on Koh Rong Island for £52 per night.

Location 3 was a one bedroom hotel in Kampot for £24 per night.

The first and the second were booked directly and both saved around 15%.

Where we paid landlords directly, we transferred via Wise rather than bank wire. The fee was transparent upfront, the money arrived the same day, and it cost a fraction of what a hotel markup or platform fee would have added. If you are booking longer stays directly with guesthouses or landlords, it is worth having a Wise account set up before you arrive.

Food and Eating Out

Cambodia is genuinely cheap to eat in if you are willing to eat where locals eat. The gap between market food and tourist-restaurant plus supermarket food is significant – more so than in Thailand.

A family lunch at a local market or street stall – rice, a curry or stir fry, cold drinks – costs £4–8 for four people. A sit-down meal at a mid-range tourist restaurant with Western options on the menu is £20–35. The difference adds up quickly over a month if you default to tourist areas.

Siem Reap in particular has a concentration of Western-facing restaurants near Pub Street and the old market that are priced for people on a week’s holiday, not families doing a month. One street back, or out towards the residential areas, the same quality of food is significantly cheaper.

Our food spend was just £850 for the month. This might seem very expensive for Cambodia, and it is, but we ate at home many times which ultimately spiked our total spend into Western prices due to the choices we made; supermarkets in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (where we stayed) are also well-stocked with imported goods, which is convenient but not cheap. Prices for Western products – cereals, cheese, pasta – are comparable to what you’d pay in the UK. Fresh local produce from markets is cheap. Leaning into the local food supply keeps the weekly shop reasonable.

Transport

Getting around within Cambodia’s cities is easy and cheap. PassApp (Cambodia’s version of Grab) and Grab are very common and both work reliably in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap – a tuk tuk across town is £1.50–3, a car slightly more. We used it for almost all in-city transport and found it more predictable than negotiating with independent tuk tuk drivers, particularly with the children.

Intercity transport by bus is affordable. Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (roughly six hours) costs £6–10 per adult on a comfortable air-conditioned bus. Families will typically pay for children’s seats on longer journeys. We used VET for our 12 hour, overnight sleeper bus from Siem Reap to Kampot paid £50. Flying was much quicker but this option was more cost effective when you factor in the fact it acted as a night’s accommodation for us.

If you are entering Cambodia from Thailand overland – which many families doing the SEA circuit do – the Poipet or Koh Kong crossings are manageable but busy. Factor in a full day for the crossing rather than half a day. We crossed over from Cambodia into Vietnam via the Ha Tien land border crossing, which was very straight forward besides the few hundred metres walk in no-mans land between the two borders (which wasn’t easy in 30 degree heat, two hungry kids and all our luggage!).

Our total transport spend across the month came to £222.

The Dollar Economy: What It Means for Your Budget

This is the part of Cambodia’s cost picture that most travel articles either miss or underexplain, and it has a direct effect on how much you end up spending.

Cambodia’s de facto currency is the US dollar. ATMs dispense dollars. Most prices are quoted in dollars. Change below $1 is given in Cambodian Riel (KHR) at a fixed rate of approximately 4,000 Riel to the dollar. You will end up with a pocketful of Riel whether you intend to or not – it is used for small transactions, tuk tuks, and market stalls.

What this means for a UK family is that you are working through two conversions: GBP to USD, and then USD to local spending. The exchange rate risk sits at the GBP/USD level, not GBP to a local currency you have never heard of.

ATM fees in Cambodia are higher than anywhere else in Southeast Asia we visited. Most ATMs charge a local fee of $5–6 per withdrawal, regardless of which card you use. Some charge more. Unlike Thailand, where the local ATM fee is 180–200 Baht (roughly £4), in Cambodia you are paying $5+ every time without exception. This is not a card-specific limitation – it is a local banking structure issue, and every traveller pays it. For this reason it’s worth trying to pay on card whenever you can, even if there is a % charge for doing so as it may work out cheaper than withdrawing the equivalent amount in cash.

What Starling does is ensure you are not paying twice. With a standard high-street bank account, you would pay the Cambodian ATM fee and a foreign transaction fee on top. With Starling, you pay the Cambodian ATM fee and nothing more. On a family withdrawing cash three or four times a week, the difference across a month is £30–50.

The smarter approach for Cambodia specifically is to convert GBP to USD in advance via Wise and either withdraw from your Wise USD balance or minimise withdrawals by using card payments where possible. Cambodia’s card acceptance at shops and restaurants is better than you might expect in Phnom Penh and tourist areas of Siem Reap, though cash is still essential for markets, tuk tuks, and smaller guesthouses. We cover the full card and ATM strategy for Southeast Asia in our guide to avoiding ATM fees.

Activities and Entrance Fees

The Angkor Archaeological Park is the reason most families go to Siem Reap, and the entrance fee structure is the biggest single line item in Cambodia’s activity budget. Prices at time of writing:

• 1-day pass: $37 (£28) per adult
• 3-day pass: $62 (£47) per adult
• 7-day pass: $72 (£54.40) per adult
• Children under 12: free

For a family of two adults doing three days at Angkor, that is $124 (£93.50) before you have hired a tuk tuk driver to take you around the temples, which costs an additional $15–20 per day and is genuinely worth it as the temples cover an enormous area. Budget $150–175 (£115-130) for the full Angkor experience for two adults and two young children over three days. We went for the 3-day pass and utilised a trick we’d heard from other travelling families to snag ourselves some extra time; if you purchase your tickets after 16:30pm you can go immediately to any site to watch the sunset and then still have your 3 full days. Not a direct discount, but we felt clever doing it!

Beyond Angkor, Cambodia’s activities are cheap. Boat trips on the Tonle Sap, cooking classes in Siem Reap, cycling around the smaller temples – all are well-priced. Kampot offers kayaking, pepper farm tours, and day trips at minimal cost.

Phnom Penh has some historically significant sites – the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum – that we felt strongly about visiting as part of understanding Cambodia honestly. These cost $3–6 (£2.20-4.60) per adult and are not tourist entertainment in any conventional sense. Worth noting for families thinking about how to approach the history with older children.

Our total activities spend across four weeks came to £362.95.

Connectivity

SIM cards in Cambodia are cheap and easy to buy at the airport or in any town centre. A local SIM with 20–30GB of data per month costs $5–8 (£4-6). Metfone, Smart Axiata, and Cellcard are the main networks. Coverage in cities and tourist areas is good; rural areas are patchier. We went with Cellcard after reading online they have good coverage. It was easy to set up via their phone app and we had no issues.

If you prefer to have data ready before crossing the border- particularly if you are coming overland from Thailand or Vietnam – Airalo offers Cambodia eSIM packages from around £4 for 1GB up to £12–25 for a monthly data allowance. We have used Airalo for bridge connectivity at several SEA crossings and found it reliable for the first day or two before picking up a local SIM. See our full eSIM guide for Southeast Asia for more on how we manage connectivity across the region.

Our connectivity spend in Cambodia came to £13.40 for two local SIMs with Cellcard for 50gb each.

Healthcare and Insurance

Cambodia’s healthcare infrastructure is more limited than Thailand’s. Phnom Penh has a handful of private international clinics used by expats – the Royal Phnom Penh Hospital and Sunrise Japan Hospital are the most commonly recommended. Siem Reap has Angkor Hospital for Children for paediatric care and a small number of private clinics. Outside of these centres, facilities drop off quickly.

The practical implication for travelling families is that a serious medical situation in Cambodia would likely involve evacuation to Bangkok, which adds cost and complexity. That is not a reason to avoid Cambodia, but it is a reason to make sure your insurance covers medical evacuation and does not just cover in-country treatment.

Both True Traveller and SafetyWing cover Cambodia as standard within their worldwide policies. We are with True Traveller and have claimed twice during our trip without issues. SafetyWing is a credible alternative if you want the flexibility of a monthly subscription rather than committing the full premium upfront. For a fuller cost comparison between the two, see our travel insurance cost guide for a family of four.

If you are not yet insured, sort it before you cross the border. A private clinic visit in Phnom Penh for something that turns out to be minor costs $80–150 (£60-115) out of pocket. Something that is not minor is considerably more.

Monthly Budget Summary

These figures are for a family of four (two adults, two young children), travelling at a slow to medium pace – not rushing, not doing every paid activity, eating a mix of local and Western food.

These figures exclude flights in and out of the country and international travel insurance, which should be costed separately as part of your overall trip budget. The Angkor pass (£95+ for two adults) will push the activities line up significantly in any month that includes a Siem Reap visit – factor that in rather than treating it as a surprise.

For a wider view of what long-term family travel costs across the region, see our guide to long-term travel costs.

Our Honest Take: Is Cambodia Cheap?

Cambodia is genuinely affordable, but it is not uniformly cheap, and the reasons it costs more than expected are specific enough to be worth understanding in advance.

The dollar economy is manageable once you understand it, but it does add friction – particularly around cash. Families who rely heavily on ATM withdrawals will pay more in fees here than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Going in with a USD balance held in Wise, maximising card payments in tourist areas, and withdrawing cash less often is the right approach.

The Angkor pass cost is significant. A family doing three days in Siem Reap should budget £120-150 for the temple complex alone, which is not what most people picture when they think “budget Southeast Asia.”

Outside those two things, Cambodia delivers well on the value promise. Accommodation is good for the price, food is excellent and cheap if you eat locally, and Kampot in particular is one of the most relaxed and affordable bases we found in the region.

Our overall view: Cambodia works well as part of a longer Southeast Asia trip rather than as a standalone cheap destination. Families spending a full month will find their per-day cost falls as the Angkor pass averages out and the accommodation rate drops on a monthly booking. Families doing a week or two will feel the ATM fees and entrance costs more acutely.

Who This Is and Isn’t Right For

Cambodia works well for families who are doing a longer circuit through Southeast Asia and can slow down for a month, are comfortable with a largely cash economy and have sorted their card setup in advance, have older children who can engage with Cambodia’s history and culture, and want a genuinely different experience from the more tourist-polished parts of Thailand.

It is less straightforward for families who need reliable card acceptance everywhere (Cambodia is improving but cash remains essential outside city centres), are expecting Thailand-level medical infrastructure, or have very young children who find long travel days difficult – overland crossings into Cambodia can be slow and bureaucratic.

For everything on managing money across Southeast Asia as a UK family, our Starling vs Wise vs Revolut comparison is the place to start before you leave.