Meet Cambodia's Wildlife the Right Way
The elephant sanctuary photo everyone shares from Angkor is years out of date, and that’s genuinely good news.
The elephant riding ban is real, and it’s a win
APSARA, the authority that runs Angkor Archaeological Park, banned elephant riding inside the park entirely in 2020. No one should be climbing onto an elephant’s back for a photo at Phnom Bakheng or anywhere else in the park; any tour pitching that is describing something that no longer exists and never should have. The elephants that used to carry tourists were retired instead to Kulén Elephant Forest, a 1,100-acre protected community forest near Phnom Kulen, about 40km north of town. Half-day observation visits, around $100, let you walk alongside the herd through real jungle, watch them bathe in natural ponds, and help prepare fruit for them, with zero riding, zero bullhooks, zero performing tricks.
The birds are the real headline act
Prek Toal Core Bird Sanctuary, out on Tonlé Sap, is Southeast Asia’s top waterbird breeding site, and it doesn’t get nearly the attention the elephants do. Guided eco-boat trips between December and March put you within view of nesting colonies of spot-billed pelicans, milky storks, black-headed ibis, greater adjutants, and grey-headed fish eagles, several of them globally threatened species you won’t casually see elsewhere in the region.
A quieter kind of animal encounter
APOPO’s HeroRATs program is worth a stop for a completely different reason: these scent-trained African giant pouched rats have been detecting landmines across Cambodian farmland for years, and the visitor center explains how the program works with live outdoor demonstrations.
What this category is not
There’s no big-name zoo or safari park to send you to here, and that’s the honest answer rather than a gap to paper over. Skip any tuk-tuk driver or roadside stall offering a photo with a leashed macaque or gibbon near a temple gate: those animals are almost always kept in miserable conditions purely for tourist photos, and paying for the photo funds keeping the next one captive too.
Verdict: Kulén Elephant Forest and Prek Toal are the two animal experiences actually worth building a morning around here; treat anything advertising elephant rides or roadside primate photos as a hard pass. Book Prek Toal trips for the December-to-March dry season, when nesting activity peaks and boat access is easiest.
For the boat ride out to the flooded forest itself, see the outdoor activities guide .