Chi Phat is a beautiful village in the remote province of Koh Kong, near the Thai border in southwestern Cambodia. There is a dozen of foreigners sat down to a communal dinner of chicken curry and plenty of activities from fishing, bird-watching at sunrise, mountain biking across rocky streams, swimming in waterfalls to fending off rain forest leeches. Villages like Chi Phat had little contact with the outside world. A lack of infrastructure gives least-explored terrain and a region remained virtually forbidden to outsiders.

Unfortunately new roads now penetrate the jungle and scale the hills. New bridges traverse the area’s numerous rivers. And as Cambodia has achieved a level of political stability, a small but diverse array of Western-run accommodations featuring the makeshift restaurant in Chi Phat has opened in the last few years, catering to both backpackers and the well-heeled.

However thanks to this new accessibility travelers can now discovering the area’s biodiversity, which includes one of Southeast Asia’s largest tracts of virgin rain forest. The region of Koh Kong covers 4,300 square miles, but the charms of Cambodian rural life are readily apparent in Chi Phat, home to about 2,500 people. The village is nestled in the Southern Cardamom Mountains, up the mangrove- and bamboo-lined Preak Piphot River. Wooden houses on stilts, towering palms, children wearing navy blue and white uniforms hanging out on the backs of water buffalo in neon green rice fields.

Last year, Chi Phat welcomed 1,228 visitors, according to the alliance, an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2009. Residents are receiving much-needed income that allows them to reside year-round in the village, allowing their children to go to school and get to health care. On trips organized by the Community-Based Eco-tourism office, visitors can trek through fields filled with canary yellow and electric blue butterflies to reach bat caves hidden behind curved waterfalls, or plant a tree at a reforestation nursery. Recent visitors reportedly caught a glimpse of a few of the area’s roughly 175 endangered elephants.

The Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Cambodia is situated just eight kilometres away from the renown Angkor Temples, on the edge of the town of Siem Reap.It’s existed since 1931 and have provided accommodation for the visitors of the Angkor Temples.It is a great destination and famous historical hotel.

The Spa center of the hotel offers a wide variety of treatments for your relaxed and rejuvenating stay at the hotel.The so called Angkor Escape is dedicated to the explorer of the Angkor Wat temples who is in need of rest and good care. This procedure includes an Aroma Hydro bath to recharge your body’s energy, followed by a full body massage and an express skin care facial.

Khmer Traditional Healing and Afternoon TeaTop is an unique experience through the traditional healing techniques which are commonly used in Cambodia and you can experience from your own room or suit.

This is a private Orient-Express hotel on the banks of Siem Reap river in Cmabodia.La Residence d’Angkor is made of natural woods in the local Khmer style.Situated close by Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renown as one of the wonders of the world, it is perfectly situated to explore this amazing complex of temples.

Close to the hotel are the town’s craft markets, restaurants and galleries and the alluring Tonle Sap Lake with its “floating village”. This adorable hotel’s quiet gardens, swimming pool and spa are the ideal space for relax from a thrilling day.

Kong Kea Spa is a totally indulgent sensory experience dedicated to pampering your body while relaxing your mind using local organic and chemical free products. Ideal for cleansing, purifying and relaxing body and mind, Kong Kea Spa offers treatment rooms,large reception area decorated with an oversized aquarium and water feature as well as five illuminated water walls.In addition to treatment rooms, a relaxation area is located in the centre of the Kong Kea Spa. It features a cold plunge pool overlooking the bamboo garden. This area is available for spa guests, who may enjoy its tranquillity and serenity for as long as they wish.

Placed in central Siem Reap,Cambodia, this fantastic luxurious boutique hotel is part of the world reognized Relais & Chateaux Alliance. Offering just 26 rooms and suites, The Heritage is the ideal private base for an amazing Angkor enjoynments. Authentic, traditional and at the same time modern ambience.

The architecture, the uniquely designed suites, the kind and efficient service,the culinary Western and Cambodian delights make Heritage perfect. A lavish shelter,only a 3 minutes tuk tuk ride from downtown Siem Reap and a 10 minutes ride from Angkor Wat temples and their wonders.

Created as a sheltering cocoon and using organic products, Bodia Spa Center of the hotel is an absolute sensual pleasure commited to harmonize both body and soul in the quiet natural environment of the area.

Designed for your optimal pleasure,the rooms are bright and spacious. All deluxe rooms provide amenities centralized air-conditioning and high speed internet connection.

Hotel de la Paix is a calm oasis in an urban streets cape of Cambodia surrounded by fire gardens, water features and a three-story spa pavilion. The hotel is located just on a few steps from the vibrant nightlife and colourful markets and a short drive from the temples of Angkor Wat.

All guest rooms are spacious and sumptuously appointed, offering views of urban street scape or architecturally landscaped courtyard gardens. Chic interiors and contemporary furnishings, including handcrafted lamps and intricate wall mountings achieve a harmonious balance between modern design and traditional detailing. Each room features a King size bed or twin beds. The exclusive Pool Suite, with chic interiors and contemporary furnishings, offers a choice of indoor or outdoor living. Relax or dine on your private pool deck or plunge directly into the Khmer-inspired swimming pool and water garden.

The modern spa at Hotel de la Paix offers the ancient therapies known for their soothing, restorative qualities. A restaurant and delicatessen offer the best of East and West cuisine, a Pool service for light snacks and a Lounge Bar with art exhibitions are available. Complimentary live shows are performed at the courtyard garden on selected evenings.

Within footsteps of Hotel de la Paix is an interesting and varied selection of local shops and markets selling Cambodian Handicrafts, textiles and traditional art. Speciality shops and boutiques offer a range of handmade items including silk scarf, silverware and intricate wooden carvings. The hotel also has adopted self-regulated activities to eradicate the adverse effects of its operations, maximize the positive impacts, enhance the environment and to support the local community in a respectful and dignified manner.

I have written many times about the miraculous country called Cambodia. But this time I will present a really different look of the country. To many tourists Cambodia means only two things: the majestic temples of Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh. But the southern coast of the country is ”Another Cambodia” and during the recent years emerged as an alternative to the heavily trafficked beaches of Thailand.

Some people said that almost every place in Cambodia has a ghost story attached to it. This is why Cambodian people practice Theravada Buddhism. Their Gods are able to cross between the border of the world. When you are in Cambodia I strongly recommended you to go in Kep, where a series of funky bamboo and wood tree houses, many with terrific views of the Gulf of Thailand and the Vietnamase island Phu Quoc.

The image shows Rajana in Sihanoukville, a chain of nonprofit stores with wonderful textiles and some clothing and knickknacks. Sihanoukville is a place with white sands, authentic shops and non-restaurant-based night life.

If you stroll down to Serendipity Beach will bring you in contact with fire throwers, mystics, British Vogue photographers, sex tourists and many, many opportunities to indulge in something called a “vodka bucket.” Several airlines, including Cathay Pacific (with a stop in Hong Kong) and Korean Air (with a stop in Seoul), have flights from Kennedy Airport in New York, with round-trip fares in April starting at about $1,300, based on a recent Web search.

Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. It is also economic, industrial, cultural, tourist and historic center. One of the ways to examine the city’s layers is to settle into a ”cyclo”, a kind of bicycle-powered rickshaw, for a three-hour tour of the city’s architecture.

 

Phnom Penh is a city of water. Some of its main streets were once canals, and there’s no better way to honor Phnom Penh’s riparian soul than with a sundowner at Maxine’s.

 

The meeting point for many tourists had become the main post office in Phnom Penh, built in 1895.

 

It’s good to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum where at least 14,000 men, women, and children were tortured.

 

At Romdeng, another nonprofit restaurant in Phonm Penh, students serve traditional Cambodian cuisine, including crispy-fried tarantulas seasoned with lime and pepper sauce. Be aware that Khmer cuisine is not for the squeamish.

Grand Hotel d’Angkor is in eight kilometres from the famed Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The hotel is within five minutes drive of the town and 8 km from Siem Reap International Airport. The hotel was housed in 1932 and reopened in 1997 surrounded by beautiful landscaped garden. The place has colonial-style with cambodian furniture and decor, extremely tasteful.

The hotel owns 131 guest rooms and suites, each one with art-deco, country-style furnishings and Cambodian objets of art. The Main Building, carefully restored and refurbished to its original architectural style, is complemented by new wings of the same architectural inspiration.

The Grand Hotel d’Angkor has a number of elegant cafés and restaurants spread over a variety of stunning terraced, indoor and outdoor settings. They are The Apsara Terrace in the gardens has a stage set up with a backdrop of four wooden flagpoles for classical Cambodian dance performances.

The Conservatory offers live classical music and the delightful Café d’Angkor provides the classic furniture for a hearty al fresco breakfast, lunch or dinner. In addition, the Elephant Bar is famous as the place to go in Siem Reap, a historic bar with charming atmosphere and original cocktails.

The Amrita SPA includes a fully equipped gym as well as sauna, jacuzzi and massage rooms. The leisure installations are crowned by a 35-metre lap pool, a family fun pool and a tennis park comprising two tennis courts and a sheltered pavilion, providing a lively focus of activity for hotel residents.

Soothing reflexology sessions and specialised treatments like the ‘foot cooler’, a 45-minute peppermint scrub and massage ideal for temple-weary feet, are tailor-made to the needs of the clientele. Look out for the teap bourn treatment as well; it involves blind local therapists coming in to give you a 4-hands massage. What’s more, 20% of the treatment fee goes to a local charity that supports local orphans and the blind.

Gallery

Dining:

The Dining Room (traditional Asian & Western cuisines)

Walk-in-wine cellar

The Temple was constructed over a period of 30 years, and illustrates some of the most beautiful examples of Khmer and Hindu art. Covering an area of about 81 hectares, the complex consists of five towers, which are presently shown on the Cambodian national flag. These towers are believed to represent the five peaks of Mount Meru, the Home of Gods and Center of the Hindu Universe. Angkor Wat features the longest continuous bas-relief in the world, which runs along the outer gallery walls, narrating stories from Hindu Mythology.

Conventional theories presume the lands where Angkor stands were chosen as a settlement site because of their strategic military position and agricultural potential. Alternative scholars, however, believe the geographical location of the Angkor complex and the arrangement of its temples was based on a planet-spanning sacred geography from archaic times. Using computer simulations it has been shown that the ground plan of the Angkor complex – the terrestrial placement of its principal temples – mirrors the stars in the constellation of Draco at the time of spring equinox in 10,500 BC. While the date of this astronomical alignment is far earlier than any known construction at Angkor, it appears that its purpose was to architecturally mirror the heavens in order to assist in the harmonization of the earth and the stars. Both the layout of the Angkor temples and iconographic nature of much its sculpture, particularly the asuras (‘demons’) and devas (‘deities’) are also intended to indicate the celestial phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes and the slow transition from one astrological age to another.

Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime have been suggested. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes. Statuary is conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work.

During half-millennia of Khmer occupation, the city of Angkor became a pilgrimage destination of importance throughout Southeastern Asia. Sacked by the Thais in 1431 and abandoned in 1432, Angkor was forgotten for a few centuries. Wandering Buddhist monks, passing through the dense jungles, occasionally came upon the awesome ruins. Recognizing the sacred nature of the temples but ignorant of their origins, they invented fables about the mysterious sanctuaries, saying they had been built by the gods in a far ancient time. Centuries passed, these fables became legends, and pilgrims from the distant reaches of Asia sought out the mystic city of the gods. A few adventurous European travelers knew of the ruins and stories circulated in antiquarian circles of a strange city lost in the jungles. Most people believed the stories to be nothing more than legend however, until the French explorer Henri Mouhot brought Angkor to the world’s attention in 1860. The French people were enchanted with the ancient city and beginning in 1908 funded and superbly managed an extensive restoration project. The restoration has continued to the present day, excepting periods in the 70′s and 80′s when military fighting prevented archaeologists from living near the ruins.

Orthodox archaeologists sometimes interpret the temples of the Angkor complex as tombs of megalomaniacal kings yet in reality those kings designed and constructed the temples as a form of service to both god and their own subjects. The temples were places not for the worship of the kings but rather for the worship of god. Precisely aligned with the stars, constructed as vast three dimensional yantras and adorned with stunningly beautiful religious art, the Angkor temples were instruments for assisting humans in their realization of the divine.

“full of deep sympathy for the good of the world, so as to bestow on men the ambrosia of remedies to win them immortality….By virtue of these good works would that I might rescue all those who are struggling in the ocean of existence.”

Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination: attendance figures for the temple are not published, but in 2004 the country received just over a million international arrivals, of whom according to the Ministry of Tourism 57% planned to visit the temple. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance—approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site is spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams rather than by the Cambodian authorities.