Free Things to Do in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
The temples need a pass, but almost everything else in Siem Reap does not. On a Sunday afternoon the West Baray — an eleventh-century reservoir eight kilometres long, still holding water — fills with Khmer families swimming off the sandy shore and eating on bamboo platforms, and nobody checks a ticket. In town, the fruit bats in the Royal Independence Gardens, the back rows of Psar Leu market and the riverside path after dark are all free, and two of the better craft workshops run guided tours at no charge.
In and around town
Artisans Angkor's workshop off Stung Thmey Street runs free guided tours of its stone and lacquer studios, and its silk farm at Puok, about sixteen kilometres west, does the same, usually with a free shuttle from town. Psar Leu on National Road 6 is the market locals actually use — noisy, unpolished and free to wander. The Royal Independence Gardens near the Raffles hotel hold a large fruit-bat colony worth timing for dusk. Made in Cambodia Market in Kandal Village has live music most evenings, and the riverside promenade and its bridges are pleasant once the sun drops.
Countryside without a ticket
The West Baray is the standout: reachable in about twenty minutes by tuk-tuk from the centre, with swimming, food stalls and a genuinely local weekend crowd. Its island temple, West Mebon, sits inside the Angkor ticket zone, but the shoreline does not. Cycling the flat lanes around Puok or south towards Phnom Krom passes rice fields, lotus ponds and stilt houses at no cost beyond bike hire. Note that anything inside the archaeological park — Kbal Spean, Phnom Bakheng, Banteay Srei — requires a pass, and checkpoints are staffed properly, so plan those separately.