With much of my concentration on updating my technology blog, and couple with increase workload in my job, there is not much time left for me to plan for the trip to Cambodia, including looking for hotel and accomodation in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh of Cambodia, two cities where we would stay overnight. With 2 more day to departure date (I should have done better, I booked my Hong Kong’s hotel 5 days before departure, so this is another record), I guess it’s time now to book a guesthouse or hotel, especially since our group is not a small group of few people, and some guesthouses and hotels may not have enough rooms for so many of us. It’s especially troublesome and scary if all of us dragging the luggage and search for cheap sleep hotel from hotel.

I have decided that as we will go to Phnom Penh last, so the accomodation there will only be decided when we reach Cambodia. So my search now is mainly focused on Siem Reap, where we will be staying our first few nights in Cambodia. However, my search for accomodation for Siem Reap is made easy of several website such as Tales of Asia, which has a very detailed information on Siem Reap accomodation and guide for overland travel between Bangkok, Thailand and Siem Reap, Cambodia. The owner of Tales of Asia has now open its own guesthouse in Siem Reap named Two Dragons Guesthouse & Restaurant.

After discussing with Chung Khoon and Ciline, with some comparison to Lonely Planet Cambodia guidebook, the Rough Guide to Cambodia and Footprint Cambodia, we decided to book Bou Savy Guesthouse which has free breakfast, free airport pick-up service and hot shower, plus cheap rate of just USD $12 for double room with air conditioning. All these are major criteria that I looked for when searching for accomodation, as the group is pretty diverse with different expectation. Too bad Bou Savy Guesthouse replied via email that they’re fully booked on 10th August 2006, our second day in Cambodia which we plan to visit Angkor Wat. It will be much inconvenience to come back to Siem Reap from Angkor just to switch hotel. Bou Savy Guesthouse also recommends us to Angkor Star Hotel for USD $25 a room per night, including breakfast, but this is way out of my budget.

Then I emailed to several guesthouses in one go, including Two Dragons Guesthouse & Restaurant, Dead Fish Tower Inn, Hostel Geckoo’s Nest, Jasmine Lodge, Queen House Villa, Ancient Angkor Guesthouse, Popular Guesthouse, Red Lodge, Golden Temple Villa and Garden Village Guesthouse.

Among those, only Two Dragons Guesthouse & Restaurant, Dead Fish Tower Inn, Queen House Villa, Jasmine Lodge, Popular Guesthouse, Red Lodge and Golden Temple Villa replied to my email. Of those we picked Golden Temple Villa after influencing by Wai Ling that it’s close to Siem Reap central Old Market Psar Chaa area, which is close proximity to the famous “bar street”, although in actual, we would seldom patron any of the bar there.

Golden Temple Villa rate is USD $15 for air-cond double room and USD $20 for air-cond triple room. No free bicycle, but there are hot shower, free internet access, free flow of coffee, tea and fruits.