Battambang · With kids

Beyond the evening show, the school runs guided campus tours in Khmer, English and French on weekday mornings and afternoons, plus bookable art and circus workshops. Children get to watch the training rather than only the performance; the campus is in Anh Chanh village on the town's western edge.

A small museum of Angkorian and pre-Angkorian stone sculpture near the riverfront, gathered from temples around the province. It is quiet and takes about twenty minutes, which with children is roughly right.

As the heat drops the Sangker promenade fills with families, food carts and the open-air aerobics classes Cambodian towns run at sunset. It costs nothing, it is safe on foot, and it is the easiest evening in town with small children.

Two kilometres south of the centre, a stretch of early twentieth-century wooden Khmer houses among orchards, a couple of which open to visitors. A short flat ride by bicycle or tuk-tuk and a good way to show children what the town looked like before concrete.

March to May regularly passes 35°C and the town has almost no shade between about eleven and three. Do the outdoor things early, spend the middle of the day indoors or in water, and go back out at five.