Golden Beach Resort — Hotel in Koh Rong

Golden Beach is perhaps the second most well-known resort on the island. It certainly is a very nice, well-maintained property, and overall was a good experience, but in the end, I wish I would have just stayed at another resort the whole time among the many to choose from, Here's why:||||The bungalow itself was very nice, and had a nice rustic beach theme. Real wooden floors, nice lighting, and the bathroom was perfect, the best I've seen in Koh Rong, with really nice locally-made Kambio soaps. There are two pools, which is nice. The air conditioner was spotty.||||However, the misleadingly named "beach front" Bungalow was actually in front of a busy road facing the beach that was crowded with teenage drunks, tuktuks and motos, which kind of ruined the perception of luxury and exclusivity they tried to conjure: You can't even open the curtains without exposing your entire room to everyone walking down the road, and that kinda sucked. It was a bit noisy too.||||The food was very English/British in taste, and thus not that good from my personal perspective. No real bacon, only improper, ham-like floppy British style "bacon", no ketchup (to which I had to buy a bottle of Vietnamese Heinz in កោះតូច just to eat with my eggs and potatoes), no syrup for the pancakes, bizzare Anglo breakfast items that could only appeal to an English palate like canned mushrooms and beans, and the juice was not very good or premium at all (except the lime and mango juices, which were excellent), certainly not for the price this resort charges per night. They had very nice bread and butter though, and the pancakes were good.||||The Khmer staff were very kind (especially the bartender, whose name I unfortunately didn't get, but he's a heavyset guy with slicked hair), but the barang staff (all from Poland) I found to be rather curt and passive-aggressively rude, especially the blonde lady with the glasses. At Golden Beach I was given a passive-aggressive reminder that checkout was 11, and that I was limited to only two daytime guests to come over and hangout (as I have good Khmer friends in Koh Rong); When I asked for some cash in Riel to pay a local boy for some juice I bought the day prior, the Polish woman with glasses told me "no one does that here" and then implied that Khmer people would either rip me off; or charge 8% for any riel I ask for (which not only wasn't true--I managed to not only get riel from local Khmer at 100000៛ for only 2000៛, but another resort I stayed at subsequently gave me riel for no charge at all). This really soured my experience, since I know wasn't true.||||Also, maybe it was busy for Jol Jnam Tmey, but we left our trash outside at front as well as our breakfast plates, and it sat there for two days! Trash, plates (which attracted stray dogs and cats) and tea bottles piled up to the point I had to ask a Polish staff member to do something--only for her to take at least an hour to relegate that duty to a local Khmer worker (was the Polish lady too "good" to do such job herself?) That shouldn't be acceptable at all, even if shortstaffed for Khmer New Year.||||I did extend my initial stay, but in retrospect I regret it as I didn't know about the other resorts, and how relatively lacking Golden Beach was, especially in terms of comparative value (as Golden Beach is more expensive than every other Sok San side resort save the Kith Meng one). While not horrible, I wouldn't recommend exactly either. There are better...

I wanted to provide a fair review and feedback. We are experienced travellers and have stayed in all different types of accommodations in various budgets. The bay itself, is quiet and only has a few restaurants.

At the golden beech hotel, We paid about £165 a night or total $620 US for 3 nights in this hotel in SokSan so it’s not cheap for Cambodia. So immediately you expect it to be very good. Hotel charges an extra 3% to pay using any type of card. Cash is king and you need to have cash with you.

The good: The hotel is lovely and the rooms you can’t fault. Lovely towels and robes. No tv but decent Wi-Fi. Excellent shower. We had a pool view room but I would have been happy with a garden view to at the lower price. Glad we didn’t opt for the beech facing rooms as I didn’t think they warranted the cost. Rooms have refilled glass water bottles which I loved instead of plastic.. so important nowadays. Room service is excellent. Pools are lovely and clean. The sunbeds look nice but the ones round the pool nearest the bar are not comfortable. The beech is beautiful and the hotel was making an effort to keep the beds for their own guests which was good to see as I read this was a complaint from many other guests in earlier reviews. The hotel could rope their beach off and make it clear it’s a hotel beach. We didn’t have an issue getting sunbeds on the beach. Bar was great and the barman is good but we couldn’t get a cocktail before 2pm when he starts. Restaurant is lovely Breakfast had a good choice Menu for lunch and dinner could do with more options for veggies Reception staff are helpful Sopart who drives Tuk tuk is excellent. Safe driver and so helpful. Ideal way to see other bays. We liked long set beech, coconut beach and palm beech. We didn’t like the main town of kO touch…. Grotty place a bit like soho. Maybe better in the day. Dogs living at or around the hotel are being fed which was nice to see.

What wasn’t so good The food overall for this standard of hotel was very average. The Christmas menu at $40 pp I cant speak for because the service was so Bad we never got to eat it. After one hour of waiting to even order a drink we got fed up and went to a little local restaurant 5 minutes walk down the road for a fraction of the cost. And then we noticed another two couples had followed having also got fed up of waiting too. This was very poor and the management are responsible for the lack of staff, lack of coordination of taking peoples orders and the kitchen being backed up. It looked like inexperience and naivety… Shame. So overall I would recommend the hotel but not For Christmas and if your like us and food and service is important then this isn’t the place. I felt it was overpriced for the experience we had Christmas Day. Lots of other decent hotels (maybe not as plush but still nice) we saw that were cheaper with good food options.

The pier outside the hotel needs rebuilding and could then be used for more sunbeds.

Kids We don’t have children but there’s not much for them at the hotel. Kids surfing but this is for older children and a cost of $30 approx for an hour.

Wishing you...

This would be 0 stars if possible.

We decided to come to this hotel restaurant for dinner as the setting is absolutely beautiful. We ordered ribs, grilled salmon, chicken wings, pork spring rolls, prawn tempura and a Mexican pizza. The waitress was really friendly and lovely. I ordered a glass of Prosecco which arrived warm and flat, so I had asked for a new glass, the second glass returned and it was exactly the same. I then decided to change drink to white wine which arrived ok, slightly warm. The service was pretty slow as it seemed the waitress was serving everyone sat on the beach and in the front area of the hotel. When the food arrived, the ribs didn’t look appealing and tasted off, the chicken wings were terrible, the tempura was warm and the pork spring rolls didn’t have much pork inside. The salmon was mediocre. The pizza arrived last and at first glance looked good (we could see there was a pizza oven inside the restaurant) my partner ate some of the pizza and felt the texture of the mince meat was off and then with further inspection it was raw. I then had to ask the restaurant manager to come over and look at the pizza. When I went and explained to him that the pizza had raw meat on top, he said they will take it back. He took the pizza away and asked if we wanted a new one to which we declined and said we were finished with our meal, leaving 80% of the food still on the plates. After 10 minutes of waiting for him to come back over to our table to update us on the situation, he was no where to be seen. We both then walked over to the bar area to ask for the bill. The restaurant manager reluctantly took the pizza off the bill and couldn’t understand why we were still upset about the situation and said “why didn’t you check the pizza before eating it” He was abrasive for the whole situation and then when we asked to speak to someone else he then asked the general manager to speak to us. He had clearly not informed her of what had happened even though they were right next to each other which is very strange and in my opinion NOT acceptable as the kitchen is sending out raw food and he clearly wanted to keep it quiet from her. The general manager dealt with the situation just as poorly as the restaurant manager and said “you can eat raw meat” in a patronising manor. However this must happen often as she instantly prescribed medicine incase he becomes unwell from food poisoning. Both of them couldn’t care less and considering this is meant to be a five star resort, the service from the managers was shocking. Never have I experienced anything like this before and now this has potentially ruined our trip...