The Best Hotels Near Angkor Wat for Every Traveller

With car-parky, split-level concrete wings, Sabara isn’t Angkor’s prettiest luxury hotel. But rooms are large, flooded with light and placed around a pool shaded by tropical trees. The best are the tennis-court-sized sabara (family suites), decked out in arty art-nouveau tiles, with private plunge pools and well worth a less-than-£50 upgrade. The location is plum – well away from the tuk-tuk and tout hassle of Siem Reap town, and just a 10-minute drive to the ruins themselves.

You know you’ve booked a flashpacker hotel when the free airport shuttle is a tuk-tuk. There’s a spa and pool too, overlooked by a range of simple rooms – cream walls and polished concrete or laminate floors, french windows opening onto balconies and there are modest fitted workstations. The largest room sleeps four adults and the hotel is a five-minute walk from Siem Reap’s huge arts and crafts market.

Rooms in this backpacker hotel are boxy, with space for little more than a queen-sized bed, but it’s hard to find better value in Siem Reap. And you won’t want to stay indoors for long when you see the pool – set in a little garden pinked with bougainvillea with an al-fresco lounge bar and dining area. Prices include complimentary airport pick-up and a 60-minute massage.

With beds lost in an expanse of plain tiling, concrete and whitewash, the rooms at the eocambo are large, even if they won’t win any design awards. Outdoor areas are more alluring – a pool is set in lush jungly green, with plenty of sunbathing space on the deck, and staff provide breakfast (and strong coffee) even in the smallest of small hours – which is all important for those Angkor-at-sunrise tours.

Central Siem Reap hotels don’t get leafier than the Villa Indochine: loungers lie scattered over a terracotta-tiled sundeck next to a mood-lit pool and under stately tropical palms and ficus trees. The air is fragrant with frangipani – blossoms float in celadon floor jars throughout the hotel. Rooms come in tropical yellows and oranges, with floors of polished stone or painted tile and beds artily draped with mosquito nets.

A block from the river on the quieter eastern side of town, Viroth’s is a Siem Reap boutique with a touch of style. A living garden of verdant vines and hanging bromeliads cloaks the minimalist concrete and glass facade. Rooms in fashionable muted tones are dotted with Khmer art and antiquities and furnished with low-slung teak lounge chairs, sofas and commodes. A fleet of classic Rolls-Royce and Mercedes cars stand by to whisk guests to and from the airport for a fee.

Tomato-red walls, burnt orange laminate parquet flooring and vivid pistachio-green headboards mean you’ll need sunglasses indoors in this upscale backpackers hotel. But if you want to party, the location is optimal – Siem Reap’s brash Pub Street is on the doorstep. Unlike many Cambodian hotels, room prices do not include breakfast.

Modern but built to resemble a provincial country house – a faded yellow facade, terracotta tiling dropping to shady eaves and shuttered windows – furnished with chunky hard-wood furniture and beds swathed in luxurious cottons, la Riviere is one of just a handful of hotels on the banks of the Siem Reap River. The views of the town shimmering in the water are beautiful but you’ll be grateful for the thick mosquito netting on the beds, and you’ll need your repellent when lounging by the pool in the late afternoon.

As the name suggests, the Templation is all about sensuous tranquility – with intimate and modish, modernist villas in distressed concrete and rich caramel and chocolate-brown woods dotted in a semi-wild garden. The choice two-bedroom villas look particularly beautiful at night – their wall-to-ceiling windows cast lambent light over private plunge pools, framed by the dark greens of forest trees.