Independence Hotel by Dara - Sihanoukville — Hotel in Khaet Preah Sihanouk

Location

In Sihanoukville, they have a few beaches around the city, which are Ochheauteal Beach, Otres Beach, Otres Beach 2, Sokha Beach, Independence Beach, Hawaii Beach and Victory Beach. Dara Independence Resort & Spa is located nearby Independence Beach.

From Airport, it is about 20 minutes journey (21km) and from the resort to the Golden Lions took about 8 minutes (5.6km). So, I can say it is located at the very quiet place and it is good if you looking for calm environment and avoiding crowded places.

Check-in / Reception/Lobby

Once arriving the hotel, I passed my passport to the receptionist and the staff asked me to wait at the sofa. They served me with lemongrass juice and cold towel. I felt welcome immediately.

They have a lot of staff at receptionist which will attend your request immediately. Most of them are local Khmer. From what I experienced, they need to improved the English as a few of my question they couldn't understand. In a day time, there will a tourist information desk which happy to help you anytime. Lobby interior is simple and nice. But, I didn't prefer the open air lobby as the Cambodia heat is really hot and the lobby I think is not really good place to hang out, I really need an AC in Cambodia.

Room

I stayed in King Deluxe Room located at the 6th floor. When I entered the room, I was impressed immediately. I love the theme colour of the room, which is apple green, really makes peaceful environment. I was impressed with the view of the room which is a panorama window, where I can enjoy the sea and forest view, and it's look like watching the movie.

They also offered welcoming fruits, such as dragonfruits, bananas, pear and longans. If you can see my room quite spacious. Talking about the bed, it is really big and really comfortable. They provides 4 pillow, with other 4 small pillows. I really slept very well and really hard to get up every morning.

I really love their bathroom. If you do not want to miss a view when taking a bath, you can open the bathroom's curtain and enjoy the view from you bathtub. All the amenities inside the room are completed and as standard as other 4 stars hotel. The deposit box also provided and they have really big cupboard for your wardrobe.

Breakfast

Breakfast took place at Coral Restaurant. Variety of dish provided here. You can choose to have your breakfast indoor or outdoor. As I did not eat any meat/chicken, my choices of food are limited, but still I am satisfied, as long as I get my half-boiled egg and my fruits to start my day.

The Infinity Pool

I was quite lucky as the infinity pool just started operated since May 2017. It is pretty impressive. The infinity pool is overlooking the sea which is pretty cool.

I love the design of the pool. It look like when you are taking the photo, seem you are in Santorini or Mykonos, Greece but no, you are in Southern Cambodia. I can say this as they choose they turquoise color as their them. I can say it one of the infinity pool that you need to go when you are in Southeast Asia.

You can enjoy the sea and sunset while you are in the pool, or can just chill out at the bar, ordering drinks and foods.

Even though its look like modern design of pool, but still the culture and heritage of Cambodia is still remains around the pool.

I can easily spend my whole evening in this pool as it is so cool place to hangout. But to go to this infinity pool, you need to walk a little bit down to the hill.

Swimming pool near the lobby

If you are looking for a quick swim, this resort offers another swimming pool which is near to the lobby. It is big and great pool too.

Gym

I did not have a chance to try the gym. But from my observation, there are always people inside the gym. The gym is surrounded with the trees and you can enjoy the view while exercising as the...

Booked this hotel through an international online company and they were displaying room package of “run-of-house”. It turn out a total cheat on how they marketing their sales. All of our three rooms were end up at small cottage (their reception nicely called it as “separate bungalow”, which really missed lead the perception), which were ca confined/small space. The size and look is absolutely like a tribal-on-tree cottage. You need to bend yourself when you walk inside the room if your height is 165cm+. The toilet is just 50cm away from your bed room and you can smell it when other is working on the toilet, no proper ventilation and the bathroom is no lock. At the front area (I would called it a outpost personal terrace), they don’t offer you table and chairs like the other similar room next door...

We ask for other bigger room with twin bed as per our request when booking. They said rooms available, but we need to pay extra, since we booked through online company and they ask us to talk directly to online company if we are not ok with this offer. I said, that is not the spirit of “run-of-house” offer, where we deserve better room if available.

We were told by reception (his name is Sovann, whose hairstyle look like Chinese) that the pool open for use from 7am. We set up alarm very early so that we expect some good experience the pool at the seaside. We arrived the pool at 6:45am and see a pool attendance and his supervisor is cleaning the pool. We sit down and wait with some excitement when seeing a nice view. Unfortunately, the supervisor (I guess) approach and tell us the pool is going to open from 8am as per normal operation hour... Sick! We just keep calm and walk around the resort to get some sweat to our room (the so-call POD room, where it still smell some wood from the wall and ceiling which is not well dried yet).

We call reception for the go-cart to pick up to lobby for check out. We were ask to wait about 15mn! So we decide to walk up and down the hill to the lobby in our office uniform, since we have to meet other colleagues for breakfast and leave hotel for morning meeting at office.

We chose to have breakfast at Coral Restaurant. Our colleagues arrive first and they already started the breakfast. We sit down and no one approach us for coffee or tea... what kind of 4-5 star resort is this? We need to pile up our plates before some young waitress approach and clear the soil plate....

Overall experience is totally disappointed. This hotel is totally commercial and only money-motivated! They don’t care about guest experience!

My piece of advice: good place and isolated from crowded/noisy place in Sihanouk VILLE. However, don’t be excited with it room package offer of run-of-house, where you will end up in POD room/cottage with the price of almost $100 per room night! I can’t believe that they create such a room for guest in such a resorts, where you will have totally different negative experience with just $15 or $30 different per room night... don’t get cheated!

Our stay:...

I would had said my stay here, and Sihanoukville itself; was the worst place travelled overseas so far and I just don't understand the hype of this island. Now lets get back to this hotel itself.

Communications is not really good. Help desk receptionist speaks English as if he was on autopilot - you still don't really understand his explanation on things, and to make matter worse they just do not care about your planning. One of the really moment that pisses us off was missed their free shuttle bus service to town as we came way earlier to wait for the bus; to the point we even requested them to tell us when the bus arrived but to our disappointment they wouldn't even bother to inform or even hold the bus a little as we went off to see other places after getting bored of waiting. Talking about plan spoiler :(

The room itself although is creative, it isn't clean enough to give you a peace of mind. Due to its location on ground at the center of the man-made forest, flies and lizards seem to be permanent residents of these rooms instead of human beings. And for the first stay day, as nice as our room's toilet looks... The floors tiles were laid to fall opposite the floor trap direction, causing the bath and dry toilet to flood up! That made my wife's mood goes down and we requested for a room change which they seem very reluctant at first and they even send a cleaner to wipe the floor clean!

IMO, all these and the hotel is priced at $100 a night is absolutely throat cutting, and you paid in US Dollars! For food, services, whatever. Other developing countries countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam do NOT make you pay with for their goods in USD unless the money was reconverted back to its original currency. Now, on the way in and out from the hotel you will notice huge scale developments by the Chinese (China), all wanting a piece of the US Dollars. Outside sceneries isn't that impressive - all look run down and roads are mostly dusty due to construction works of the mega city.

In future, most likely this place would emulate Macao, but with the Chinese ruling over them with jobs opportunities like gambing (with casinos all over thr place) and prostitutions. An island that will be populated with the greedy Chinese because their ruler was stupid enough to sell their land to China over some dough.

Of course this place have their pros but I found out that the cons outweighs the pros by far hence this place only achieve 1/5 stars. What really astounds me would be the online reviews from the so called whites giving fantastic reviews claiming all Cambodia is the best olace to visit in the world - when nearly all SEA countries could offer much more without puncturing your pockets. Even after converting the expenses using USD to when we travelled at Japan, we realized Japan is still a cheaper and better country to travel to cost wise!

Such experience surely will put Cambodia out of all my travel list as there are much more countries that will offer much more...