Where to Stay in Siem Reap

Finding and Booking Accommodation in Siem Reap

I love the travel planning process and although I’d been researching accommodation options in Cambodia for months I’d only booked a place to stay for the first five days in Siem Reap. We didn’t want to get stuck in a hotel or guest house we didn’t like, and we weren’t sure how long we planning on staying in each new town, and wanted to have a flexible itinerary.

We booked our first accommodation stay via Agoda. One of their search filters lets you view Secret Deals, which displays limited time hotels that can be up to 80% off their list price. We had been planning on staying in budget guest houses during our trip, but when I stumbled across these reduced options I figured we may as well embrace flash-packing, and secure a little comfort to get us started on our travels. Plus, they arranged a complimentary airport pick-up which meant we didn’t have to start haggling with the cabs and tuktuks as soon as we landed in a new country.

Our first hotel in Siem Reap

The Okay 1 Villa didn’t seem like it was too far out from the center of town and all the action, so we figured it would be easily walkable from our hotel. But we hadn’t taken into consideration the draining heat and humidity, and the volume of traffic kicking up dust from the unpaved streets. This meant that each time we traveled between our hotel and central Siem Reap it cost us $2 in the tuktuk. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but we went into town each night, and that $20 could have bought us an additional night in a hotel, or two nights in a guest house.

The bed was comfortable and our room had an ensuite bathroom, and these two elements quickly became our base requirements for future rooms, in addition to a central location.

Our room also had a TV, air-conditioning and tea and coffee making facilities in the room, a bonus but not a necessity.

Above all, the primary requirement was that the room was clean and didn’t smell, and as long as it was I think we could live with any room’s shortcomings. We lucked out with our first room, but some of the other rooms on our trip didn’t quite make the grade.

The area adjacent to the Okay 1 Villa was aimed at the local Cambodian residents, but the one saving grace was a little coffee cart a three-minute walk away that served a delicious Americano. An added bonus was the Okay’s roof top pool, which offered a welcome respite after a sweltering day touring the temples.

Our second hotel in Siem Reap

Although the main hub of tourist activity is near Pub Street, we’d wandered south of the river to explore further afield and discovered some great local restaurants and a decidedly more chilled vibe along Wat Bo Road.

So for our next guest house we opted for Horizons Cambodia, located down a side street off Wat Bo. This guest house looked more than basic from it’s online photos, but after the flash-packing style of the Okay 1, the interior was a rude awakening.

The room was about half the size, and we were at the end of a corridor with a door to the outside that didn’t close and there were big gaps under all the doors for creepy crawlies to pay us a visit – and they did. There was also a construction site next door, with early-rising, music-loving workers hard at work from dawn to dusk. So we spent as little time as we could in the room, and just appeased ourselves with the excellent location.

A memorable hostel in Siem Reap

We spent more time across the road at The Living Quarters Hostel 543, than we did at Horizons. Their private pool had a low-key vibe during the day, and made a relaxing place to sit and enjoy a few beers, especially when the temperature peaked, and humidity edged towards 90%.

We popped in for nightcaps two nights running, and met an international collection of travelers, and a few expats who call this bar their local.

This hostel only had dorm rooms so it wasn’t a place we would have considered staying, but we’d definitely recommend it as a watering hole for flash-packers, or to spend some pool-side time on the oversized couches.

It would have been so easy to have extended our stay at the Okay 1 villa, but we’re so pleased that we relocated to a different part of town for the final few days of our Siem Reap trip. The accommodation wasn’t as grand, but it gave us the opportunity of exploring the city from a different angle, and it was convenient to be able to to walk to restaurants, bars, coffee shops, markets and shops, rather than having to get a tuktuk when we wanted to venture out from behind four walls.

My flash-packing accommodation booking tips

Know what your must-haves are and what you’re willing to compromise on:
1. Our Must Have: Rooms to be clean and not smelly. Comfortable Bed. Centrally located, but within budget. We started off not minding if we had an En Suite bathroom, but after the first couple of weeks it because one of our requirements (although on a couple of occasions we had to do without.)
If you’re staying in a location for more than 3 or 4 nights, consider splitting your booking across two different hotels in different locations so that you get to experience a different neighborhood.
Book accommodation through a site that has the flexibility of free cancellation. That way you can book accommodation, but keep looking for a better deal or a better location and if you can’t find one, you’ve at least secured a good option. There’s nothing more disappointing than finding a potential place, and then continuing your search and not finding anything better. Then when you try to book your first option, it’s sold out. (The upside of this is that other travelers do this, and hotels that are fully booked when you first searched often become available as you get closer to your date. So if there’s a hotel you really want to stay at, book a good alternative but keep checking your preferred hotel for availability. Nine times out of ten it’ll become available due to a last minute cancellation.
Set your optimal nightly accommodation budget.
1. Use this price as a guide so that you can use it to narrow down your search criteria, but if you can’t find a place within your budget you can increase the amount incrementally.
2. Before we traveled, we had a $10 budget, but that soon increased to $15, and by the end of the trip we were up to a $20 budget.
3. This flexible budget is something that differentiates backpackers from flash-packers. We were in enviable position of not have a set budget for the entire trip, so if we wanted to splurge on accommodation occasionally we could do it. (The most we paid was $35, and that was towards the end of our trip and we were out of flash-packer mode and into holiday mode.)

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Flashpacking through Cambodia

Flashpacking through Cambodia: For Baby Boomers on a Budget is my latest Roving Jay travel guide full of travel tips, advice, and sample itineraries for flash packers who want the back packing experience without foregoing some of life’s creature comforts – like a comfortable bed, a hot shower, free wi-fi, and somewhere to plug your electric toothbrush in.

I spent almost three months backpacking around Cambodia in 2017/2018 to research this travel guide, and I share insights and first hand knowledge of tourist traps and off-the-beaten-path discoveries. We ate street food, drank 50c beers, and travelled by train, bus, minivan and tuktuk to identify the best ways to get from A to B.

If you’d like to receive a free Review Copy ahead of the general public release, please click here.

Here’s my Cambodia posts on this blog: