Increasing theoretical attention has recently been given to the importance of material experience to the emergence of hope. Drawing on geographies of hope and the monstrous, I explore the convergence of the hope for a better world with sites of past violence within volunteer tourism placements in Cambodia. Volunteer tourism, for which Cambodia is a popular destination, allows people to volunteer for short periods of time with development or conservation organizations. Volunteer tourists on medical and community development placements attest to a hopeful belief in contributing to the eradication of poverty through improving education and medical care. However, their hope for a better future is rarely considered in the context of the monstrous sites of remembered violence and deprivation that mark the history of the impoverished places where they volunteer. Using interviews with returned volunteer tourists and auto-ethnographic reflections on participant observation in Cambodia, I consider volunteers’ visits to memorials for Khmer Rouge atrocities and communities of poverty as sites in which to observe the becoming of hope in a better future. This article gestures towards the capacity of post-phenomenological geographies of experience within specific sites to enable a greater appreciation of how this kind of hope comes to matter. The materiality of hope can then be construed as a contestation with the monstrous; between future connection and past violence.