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Journeys Within Boutique Hotel – April’s Review

Posted by Andrea on (Updated: )  |  2 Comments

By: April Cole- US Director of Operations and Tours

I know it may seem silly to post a hotel review of our hotel on here, but I actually do think it’s fitting. The reason why is because Andrea was putting together an itinerary for someone and she said she wanted a “really nice hotel” and I asked her why she wasn’t including Journeys Within? I think sometimes we feel like we’re including the hotel just because it’s ours and not because of the hotel itself and sometimes we actually sell the hotel short. Sooooo, if I want to treat the hotel like any other hotel then I need to review it! Whew! That felt like a ridiculously long explanation!

Journeys Within Boutique Hotel- Entrance
Every room is poolside

The rooms:

I’ve been lucky enough to stay in almost every room at JWBH and I’ve really liked them all. All JW rooms have:

  • Wireless internet throughout the property
  • Netbook computers to use in your room
  • Mobile phone, preloaded with minutes
  • Complimentary laundry service
  • Sodas in the minibar
  • Unlimited filtered water
  • Breakfast each morning, made to order
  • Free tuk-tuk rides to and from town each night
  • Flat Screen TVs

JWBH has a few different room types which are fitting for different travelers.

The original rooms:

I stayed in these rooms on my first trip to Cambodia four years ago. I loved them then and I love the upgrades they’ve made to them now.  Like all JW rooms they are styled with a touch of Khmer design but not overdone. When you step into your room you really feel like you can relax as the rooms are spacious and well appointed. We stayed in a room with a king sized bed and had a baby cot and still had plenty of room for our luggage and for our little one to play. The upstairs rooms each have a balcony overlooking the pool and the bay window looks out on the village area behind the hotel. The down stairs rooms have a patio with pool access. The original rooms are perfect for couples as they are quiet since the bungalows built as separate units.

Room 1- Buddha Bungalow
Room 2- Bamboo Bungalow
Room 3- Discovery Den
Room 4- Rattan Room

The Ramayana Retreat:

The original family suite that was designed for longer stays as it has a relaxing resting area upstairs and a usable living area downstairs complete with a full kitchen, bathroom with shower, and a pull out couch for extra sleeping space. The upstairs living area is an absolute oasis. The king sized platform bed is like sleeping on a cloud. The upstairs room has a sitting area with a bay window overlooking the village area behind the hotel and, of course, the room has the classic JW spa rain shower.  I love this room for a couple who is looking for a large suite with extra space, those who are staying for a longer time, or families with tweens or teens. The pull out couch is usable, but isn’t ideal for extra adults as it’s on the smaller side. This room would have been wonderful for my husband, me and our son as our son would have hung out in the downstairs living area, but my wild 18 month old daughter would be climbing those stairs non-stop, so I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who is traveling with a little one who isn’t sturdy on their feet on stairs.

Room 5- Ramayana Retreat (downstairs)
Room 5- Ramayana Retreat (upstairs)

The new family suites:

We recently stayed in the new family suites and I couldn’t have been happier with the room. After having kids and traveling as a family, my husband and I always book a suite, preferably a two bedroom suite, so the kids can go to sleep and we don’t have to sit in the dark and be quiet at 7pm ; ) ! I am not being biased when I say these were the best family suites we’ve ever stayed in.  You have two full rooms which sit side by side and have a connecting door. The “kids” rooms are set up with two full sized beds, lots of play space, a bay window and a desk area. The connecting “parent” rooms have a king sized bed, bay window and desk area as well. The rooms are the same layout as the original rooms with the exception of being built next to each other so they could be connecting rooms instead of only separate bungalows. I was very pleased at how quiet the rooms were. We had a family with two young kids staying in the units above us and we only heard them when they went up and down the outside stairs. I also liked that the rooms got really dark when you closed all the curtains – if you’ve ever tried to get a little one to take a mid-day nap while on vacation I’m sure you’d appreciate this fact too! It was a great set up for us traveling with two little ones and I would highly recommend the family suites to those traveling with kids or teens.

Room 6- Brodal Bedroom
Room 7- Sita
Room 8- Neak
Room 9- Srey

The Kids Klub:

The Kids Klub is a great space for the younger ones to have supervised play while you enjoy a quiet meal on your own or while you head out to the temples. The staff is friendly and I felt like my children were not only having fun but that they were really safe. My kids read books, colored, played with blocks and even played Wii – while we had time to have breakfast, while I attended work meetings, and while my husband and I went out on a date!

My little one loving Kids Klub.

Sabai Sabai Restaurant:

First of all I love the name- Sabai Sabai means ‘Happy Happy’ in Khmer, and Sabai is the name of one of the staff’s daughter – and she is just about the sweetest, happiest little girl you’ve ever met.  Understandably, I instantly loved the name just as I love baby Sabai. The restaurant is gorgeous. It was originally designed to be open air but it just didn’t work out as Cambodia can get really hot and really rainy – so they ended up building it with glass walls so you felt like you were outside, but had the creature comfort of AC (a must in Cambodia!).  I was pleasantly surprised to see that even though a full sized restaurant was being built, the quality of the food is as good as it’s always been at JW. I highly recommend the Pumpkin Curry Soup and the Mango Salad. If you’re feeling adventurous, take a look at the pool menu. From the pool menu you can order crickets and frogs, true Cambodian delicacies. I will admit, I wasn’t feeling adventurous and kept to the main restaurant menu during my stay. Also, if you’re traveling with kids, they do have a kid friendly menu!

Just another delicious meal at Sabai Sabai Restaurant
Great food only comes from great staff

For more information about our boutique hotel, please visit our hotel website here: http://www.journeyswithin.com/… Read more »

Happy New Year from Journeys Within!

Posted by Andrea on  |  3 Comments

To ring in 2012 we will be introducing and reintroducing our rooms at Journeys Within Boutique Hotel for the next couple of weeks. Each day we’ll tell you about another room at the hotel and let you know the reason for the name and décor.

As Maria would say, ‘Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start”…

Room #1 Buddha Bungalow

For this room the art definitely came first. I found the split Buddha Head art at the Bangkok Weekend Market and I fell in love with it. Often these pieces come with a lot of glitter and adornment on them, but I liked this one because if its simplicity. The room is also the first room where we tried the platform beds and I’ve been a big fan ever since. We have a fabric headboard behind each bed for reading at night.

The nice comfy beds and fabric headboards
The platform beds and spacious bathroom
Enjoy breakfast or a good book under the bay windows

 … Read more »

A great place to stay in Siem Reap (according to our guests!)

Posted by Andrea on  |  Leave a comment

What a great feeling to read this letter from a recent guest at the hotel! We always hope that we offer a unique experience and that the hotel is living up to guests, and our, expectations, so when we get a letter like this, it just makes our day! I’ve printed it out and given it to the staff, but also wanted to share it here!

I just thought I would share with you all this great hotel we stayed at in Siem Reap. It is called Journeys Within Boutique hotel and whilst I have put a review on trip advisor which should be on the site in a few days whilst everything is fresh in my mind thought I would email direct as I know some of you are thinking of running the half marathon next year and the rest of you are involved in First Hand and might like to know of an organization also helping the people of Cambodia.

Jamie and I both wanted to run the half marathon and also take the children with us to Cambodia so the issue was who was going to be able to look after the children whilst we ran the race and also preferably bring them along later to watch us finish. I contacted several hotels including the Victoria, but none could guarantee that someone could mind the children, apart from Journeys Within Boutique Hotel. It is owned and run by Andrea and Brandon who have lived in Siem Reap for 8 years. They have two children aged 6 and 5 and so as a result completely understand what kids need/like! The pool is lovely with loads of pool toys, a great childrens menu, our extremely spacious, tastefully decorated and planned rooms were interconnecting. The rooms were so large that you you could probably fit 4 or 5 kids in one room! They also had netbook computers in the rooms, which was useful and free wifi of course.

The staff are all extremely helpful, polite, the transfer to and from the airport (all of about 10mins) was punctual and efficient. We ate out at several recommended restaurants including the FCC but the best food was the hotels and also very good value. Breakfasts were huge and you order the night before so the kids thought this was great and would be salivating over waffles, crepes, fruit shakes etc. The Amok fish was heavenly.

They had arranged several tours for us and the guide was extremely knowledgeable and took us the back way into Angkor Wat meaning that we were going in the opposite direction to the flow of all the other tourists. We went on a fantastic half-day quad biking tour, which was the best way to see the countryside, and for the children this was the highlight of their trip. On race day itself, an early breakfast at 5am was provided as well as a tuk tuk at 5.30 to the start. Andrea then very kindly, after the children had had their breakfast bought them, together with her children out to the start to watch us finish.

Not only do they run the hotel in Cambodia but they offer tours in Laos, Burma and Thailand but more importantly they really have put back into the community. Right next door to the hotel is a large school where they have over 700 students ranging in age from 3-30 learning all types of skills, English, Korean, Mandarin, Sewing etc. They have a well programme and have built and maintain 300 wells in the surrounding Siem Reap area. They have a university programme etc. Sarina went next door to see an  Art class for kids in progress. They run other programmes including a micro finance scheme whereby they lend money to those (mainly women often existing on or below the poverty line) at very low interest rates to help them run their own little businesses and try and lift them out of poverty. There is much more information on the website archive.journeys-within.com but I just thought you might like to know about a lovely place to stay that also puts a lot back into their community too!

I have attached a couple of photos one of the hotel – we were staying in the ground floor of the house on the left hand side of the photo furthest away from the pool. Feel free to forward this on to anyone else you know that might be planning a trip to Siem Reap!

Sacha

The beautiful pool and rooms at Journeys Within
… Read more »

We have white paint!

Posted by Andrea on  |  4 Comments

By: Kathryn Rose

For a while there it felt like nothing was happening. Then, all of a sudden, all of the walls were up, there was a roof frame, and I could walk around in the “kitchen” and imagine where things would go and how it would look. We have also started planning out the new rooms and looking at new furniture. (Don’t forget to VOTE for your favorite Joel Collins photograph to help us decorate!)

Then, today, finally, we have a white wall! I literally dreamed about having white walls the other night, and now it came true! The paint man is here, working away on making the outside of the new buildings pretty and white. It will make the place looks so much better, and it made Andrea, Brandon and I so happy to see it looking like an actual building.

Ok, so it's not much, but it's a start!

Sadly, we did have to cut down our gorgeous Eucalyptus tree by the pool, because it was just too big and in the way. It is also incredibly messy, and Sao and Lai (our gardeners) are constantly fishing the leaves out of the pool and sweeping them up. Getting rid of the tree makes it so that even the new rooms will have a view of our pool, and it will save a lot of work for the gardening team.

If you look closely, you can see a man up there in the tree, chopping away the branches at the top. With no ropes.
Bye, bye pretty tree 🙁

Since we were closed this month to work extra hard on the construction, we had time to repaint and fix up all of our original rooms. So now they all have a fresh coat of paint, new pillows and squeaky clean everything. They look fantastic, and we are so excited to bring guests back this weekend!

 … Read more »

Rainy days make for muddy work

Posted by Andrea on  |  5 Comments

The rainy season has been in full swing lately, and it has made for some very muddy construction workers! The other day it was so rainy that a lot of the crew did not show up, so our staff stepped up! They are such troopers, and everyone from the front desk to the gardeners rolled up their pants and started moving dirt before guests arrived. They are such amazingly hard workers and they were happy to help us out. We had a massive pile of dirt and sand in the driveway, and they moved way more than half of it to the back where it needed to be! It was very messy, and I was constantly afraid someone would slip in the mud pit/driveway, but they were laughing and smiling the entire time.

Pehn, who works at the front desk, covered in mud with his dirt carrying tool, and still as smiley as ever!
Srey Leak and Rath still happy even though they have been moving dirt all day
These were the piles towards the end of the day. This is less than half of what was delivered...it was a long day!

And now that we are in day 2 of no rain (!!!) we have a lot of construction workers back in action! Brick walls are appearing left and right, roofs are looking more complete, and rooms are actually taking shape. Hopefully the rain can hold off during the day so we can continue with this progress!

This is the field directly behind the existing rooms. It rained quite a bit last week.
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