The Secret Garden Koh Rong — Hotel in Koh Rong

What we loved-||The beach at Secret garden is STUNNING. |White sand, no rubbish, shallow calm waters. Ideal for a family because it’s so safe. |They have lovely sunbeds, and cushions laid out, with lots of places to lay or sit. They have buttons to press for drinks/food service which is so helpful! The paddle boards and kayaks you can take for free are fab! ||The pool area is similarly beautiful, clean and aesthetic, as is the dining room! The rooms are a simple design, again, very aesthetically pleasing! House keeping kept the rooms tidy and water re-filled in the room whilst we were gone. The aircon worked really well and the shower was super hot! They provided you with beach towels and a beach bag which was great! ||I didn’t use it, but there was a good little library con communal books, and some games at the dinner room which were great ideas! ||Seeing the plankton at night was super special! After exploring the island I definitely think it’s one of the nicest beaches and resorts available! ||Things that let it down- ||The bed in our room was a little hard for me, and the missing backboard slightly uncomfortable with the mesh pattern over the bed knocking with your head, but these are minor things to complain about. The kettle in our room didn’t work properly, but in fairness we should have highlighted this to staff. Some conditioner in the room, and some communal bug spray at the dinning area was all that was missing from the toiletries. ||Sadly, the staff were just found to be really unhelpful. I think there may have been some communication difficulties, which is understandable for Cambodia- but what was concerning was the language barriers around food. We ordered room service the first night, one thing came to another and it was sent incomplete/not right. In waiting for them to fix the issue the burger had gone stone cold, when asked to please take away and re-do because it was now cold they said ‘we will re-heat it for you’. I explained please not to re-heat the meat, a fresh one will need making because at 7 months pregnant I need to be careful. They said yes, and then came back with the exact same burger re-heated but put into a new bun with new salad. I don’t think they took seriously the risks or re-heating meat, tried to hide the fact they had because it was 21:30 and by this time the kitchen was closing. My husband took it back, but at this point I just lost trust in their cooking and declined and went to bed hungry. ||My husband also asked about various other dietary restrictions and we got totally mixed messages. We also heard other people trying to ask about dietary requirements or ingredients and getting very confused messages from staff who didn’t seem to understand. Although I appreciate those with dietary restrictions come on holiday and assume an amount of their own risk, this luxury resort caters for large amounts of individuals who’s go to language for communication will be English, and with dietary restrictions you really can’t be too careful. Some more education around this for staff is really important. ||We had to send various bits of food back, like ‘overnight oats’ that were hard and hadn’t been soaked overnight just dipped in warm milk. Or food that was generally bland and un-seasoned. It’s a shame because we heard such good things about the food! ||But otherwise we generally found staff hard work- when renting a motorbike we were thrown the keys and expected to just go, had to ask for a map, ask for recommendations on where to go, ask them to come to the bike with us. We just felt like an annoyance to them. When booking the plankton tour we had to press them about how long it was, what we would need, what was involved. It was generally just quite hard work and felt like they couldn’t be bothered. ||Side note- The bike helmets definitely need some TLC (cracked, damaged)- not sure they would actually protect much if you came off. ||I truly think staff can make a hotel- even the most basic of hostels can be made by welcoming, inviting and accommodating staff. |Here- they were for whatever reason just a bit off the mark. Perhaps they were having a bad few days?||If we hadn’t paid so much for the room, we probably wouldn’t...

We were traveling with our 1 year old daughter and so we did a bit more hotel research than usual. We wanted to make sure that we stay in a clean and tidy up place. In the end we had to decide between royal sands and secret garden. Royal sands is a bit more expensive and looks indeed very nice on the pictures. But charging 70 $ for lunch and another 70 $ for dinner per person is just a complete rip off. Royal sands is quite remote and it takes some efforts to get food outside of the hotel. They are obviously taking full advantage of that. So we decided for Secret Garden which turned out to be 100% the right decision.

After traveling around the island I can say that we were more than lucky that we went for secret garden. Also the adjacent hotels were far away from Secret gardens standard. Many of the hotels we found did not really look inviting. There are some nice hotels at Sok San Beach, but the area there is so dirty/smelly and the beaches were full of trash.

Staff: The hotel staff were extraordinarily friendly and professional. The waitresses took care of our little daughter as if she was theirs. Everyone from the hotel staff was absolutely kind and heartwarming. We were about running out of diapers and only asked them if they knew where we could buy them. They asked for the size and bought them for us and even brought them to our room the same day! Sooo kind ❤️ I cannot understand the reviews where people were complaining about the staff because they didn’t understand English - we never had any communication problems with people from the hotel.

Beach: The beach in front of the hotel is clean and the water is calm, also during bad weather. We unfortunately had a lot of rain during our first days (due to the Taifun) and everywhere else the sea was very rough. The beach at the hotel is in a protected bay and also the water is very shallow. You can easily walk 100 m into the ocean, perfect for kids and also for everyone who doesn’t feel too comfortable in deep waters.

Food / drinks: The included breakfast was absolutely fine. We had the choice of one a la card breakfast and there was also a buffet with fresh fruits, a small selection of pastries, coffee, tea and juice. The selection for lunch and dinner was more than enough (I’d say there were about 30 meals on the menu at least. Classical Asian/Khmer + burger/sandwiches/pasta). Everything we ordered was very good and more than reasonably priced (everything between 5-10 $).

Rooms: We went for the beach bungalow. It was nice and tidy. One thing I must criticize here is the lack of privacy inside the room. This is something they really need to fix asap. Everyone walking past your bungalow has a full view into your room. You need to close the curtains if you want to have your privacy. But this makes you loose the beautiful view and you would need to turn the lights on. That’s something you don’t want when booking a room with a view. Management should urgently apply a window foiling that is transparent from the inside but intransparent from the outside, so that the guests can enjoy both, privacy and a nice view. It was off season during our stay, so the hotel wasn’t too busy and it was just ok for us. But this is something what definitely would have annoyed us when there would have been more people around. Privacy weighs heavy for us and is non negotiable. This is something we’d expect as given - especially with regard to the price tag. Everything else was absolutely perfect, but the privacy thing leeds to minus 1* which is 4/5 overall. Once this is being fixed, Secret...

Pros: - the most beautiful beach I've seen in my life. White sand as thin as flour. Transparent water. Fish swimming around, seashells, crabs... - kids love it. There's almost no waves. You can walk 50m into the sea and the water just reaches your waist. Great for little kid. Our 1.5 y.o. kid loved playing in the water.- the restaurant of the hotel serves fusion food. Delicious and not pricey. The neighboring hotel Your and Me has a restaurant that makes more traditional khmer food that is also delicious.- the room is spacious, bright, with an incredible view. Anyway, you will spend the whole day outside.- for 100$ you can take a boat and do fishing, snorkeling, touring the island. - the hotel has free kayaks, paddles. Can improve:- the staff is very laid back. They are very nice but at the restaurant for instance, better go to the bar to order I saw people do that rather than waiting for someone to service you. Everyone seems ok with that.Cons:- the shower is outdoor. So washing outside trying to avoid mosquitoes is not great. One night we had a visitor, a huge spider fell on my wife while she was giving bath to our kid, it was the size of my hand. Not a great experience. But we'll this is nature. Can't fault the hotel.- we staid at a double room the night before. And the only difference was just a few intelligent change in furniture : trash in with a lid, glass door in the restroom so natural light comes in, a bathtub that was not really useful. For these small changes the price difference is huge. Important Note:I learnt unfortunately that the island is infested with sand fleas. All the hotels are facing this issue. A bite is not dangerous but bothersome if you're allergic which was my case. My wife and two kids had no issue. But I was bitten on my back because there was some sand on my bedsheet and the sand fleas had a feast at night. My back itched crazy for one week. The bad thing is it seems hotels have no pharmacy. So be prepared and bring your own topical cream or cortisone cream, and antihistamine just in case. It seems I was the only one in the hotel to have this issue but googling it I found a few bloggers describing having this issue.Note 2: there's a ferry that can bring you directly from Sihanoukville to the hotel's beach, one per day. We took the GTVC to LongSet Beach Pier, then had a taxi, 5$ per person. We did that. It was a smooth ride. The taxi was a...