Beautiful hotel

“Samanea is a beautiful hotel in an incredible setting. The grounds are immaculate and the gardens are perfectly kept. The pond is really lovely, and the swimming pool is excellent. The jetty and the boardwalk around the mangroves brings you closer to the sea and to nature. The bungalows are superb, with a separate lounge area and a nice indoor/outdoor bathroom. Not too many mosquitoes, which surprised me being close to so much natural water. Many guests are weekenders from Phnom Penh, so if you visit midweek you may even have the place to yourself. Staff very helpful. I also had no problem reducing the number of nights I’d booked when changed my travel plans.

Areas for improvement:
1. Communication between managers and reception staff is poor. I needed to organise transport in several occasions, but constantly found myself having to start from the beginning each time I spoke to someone different. With the language barrier, this caused a problem more than once.
2. People have a habit of forgetting things! eg tuktuk pick-ups to take me to the bus station, forgetting to service the room one day, food items from the restaurant.
3. The restaurant could be better. Items out of stock one day after another, things missing from an order, breakfast not really explained very well (I’m still unsure what exactly is included in the room rate!), quality variable. Maybe it’s because much of their business is done at weekends?
4. Wifi is very unpredictable.

Similar hotels in many other countries/resorts could easily charge far more than the rates at Samanea and you wouldn’t feel shortchanged, so, notwithstanding the things that could be improved on, Samanea gets 5 stars for being great value for money and having a very friendly bunch of staff always willing to help.”