Siem Reap Pub Hostel — Hotel in Siem Reap

Nice enough, but trying to be a party hostel with loud music most of the day especially in the restaurant, but without any of the buzz l, fun or social life of a party hostel. And too noisy and rough round the edges to be a chilled nice hostel. The guests all awkwardly keep to themselves, even at meal times. The staff are very friendly and outgoing but this is not enough on its own for a ‘party hostel’. The rooms are nice and bathrooms are good, the restaurant is open all day which is amazing as it has a HUGE menu.

Kinda weird though that the access road is a tiny muddy path, very hard to walk down and very rough to even get a Tuk-Tuk down. Strangely they can’t call any Tuk-Tuks to pick you up from the door, because they don’t have the number for any… it was really odd, just download the Grab App and you can have one there in 2 minutes yourself!! Haha. We waited 10 mins while one staff member went to flag one down on his way home, when we finally just gave up waiting and ordered our own Grab Tuk-Tuk, the staff member was not out on the road looking for a taxi at all - he must have gone straight home without a word!!

Most of all, the sunrise and sunset tours they offer of the Angkor Wat site were pretty disappointing (and they are the reason we’re all here right!!)

The sunrise tour - Requires you up by 4am, but they don’t let you buy a drink or eat breakfast until you’ve done the first two temples 5.5 hrs later at 9:30am!?! (They didn’t tell us the time it would be!) Honestly that was bizarre the whole tour were exhausted and starving trying to enjoy one of the most amazing sites in the world. If they’d warned us we would’ve just eaten snack bars etc we had in our room! There is actually no sunrise in rainy season!! We waiting for 1.5 hours watching the horizon, but June-August (Western summer vacation time!) the sky is too cloudy to actually see the sun…. The day just gets lighter… A warning would have been nice as I’d have rather slept more and arrived at 6-7am for the photo!? sunset tour - same again starts at 11am, but they don’t let you buy anything to eat until the lunch stop 3 temples, and thousands of footsteps later - 3.30pm!? Again starving by this time with no warning it would be so late?! Easy problem to fix but bizarre. again June-August - no actual sunset, full cloud and actually raining. Even worse we sat at the top of a Temple in the rain for an hour see what we could of it, but they don’t tell you that the temples, firstly that 90% of them close when it rains! And secondly they close and literally ask everyone to leave, before 5:30pm, without time to find anywhere else, just before sunset?!? Absolutely baffled as to why our guide does not think to mention this, or that they name the tours sunset/sunrise, when they all openly say (afterwards) these don’t happen in rainy season… just stupid right?

A basic itinerary or outline of the day would be so simple and easy, we have no idea what’s ahead other than the temple names.. it’s not great, especially in the humid heat, mud, rain...

This review is long overdue as my stay here was around late October 2022, however this was my worst travelling experience to date and still taints my memory of Siem Reap.

To explain, things were going well initially. The room smelled pretty bad but apart from that it was a nice place. Things kicked off the next day when we came back from our day trip to find that our room had been completely flooded with soapy water. All of our bags, clothes, electronics and belongings completely soaked through or broken. The hostel staff told us that we had left the bathroom sink tap on and flooded the room ourselves to which we were extremely apologetic for causing a mess.

This didn’t last long though as we quickly realised that 1. The bathroom was completely dry and dusty 2. To test, we left the sink tap & shower on for 10 mins and there was no way that the sink or angled floor with it’s own drain would fill up enough to flood 3. Why was the water soapy? Seemed far more likely that a cleaner had knocked over their bucket and hose that we would often seen them with.

Anyways, so as expected we were very confused and tried to explain to the staff what we’d found. They’d given us a new room which we were grateful for but we wanted to know what actually happened and asked to see the cctv as the hall was also flooded. The staff immediately became very defensive and one woman was extremely rude and verbally aggressive. They wouldn’t let us see the cctv and it was all very suspicious. One of the staff members was quite nice and offered to come up and see the bathroom for himself. We showed him and he also agreed that there was no way the bathroom could have been flooded. This made it even more ironic when 5 mins later after talking to his manager he completely switched and started blaming us again…

Why they couldn’t just own up to it I don’t understand. They could have given us a free night and all would have been forgiven, I would have still given them a good review for fixing the problem effectively. Instead, they continued to be disrespectful and ignorant of everything we had to say and then just before 11pm when we were all getting ready for bed told us that we had to pay up for everything or they would kick us out that same night. We were getting up at 4am the next day so we had no choice but to grudgingly pay up.

Funniest part was that after we had paid for everything they started being all nice and saying that they hoped this hadn’t ruined our experience and that we’d leave a good review… Oh the irony…

I think what to take away from this oversized review is that Pub Hostel will be a good stay for you as long as nothing what-so-ever goes wrong. Cause if it does then…...

My stay at the Siem Reap Pub Hostel turned into a nightmare that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. I’ve stayed at over 20 hostels in 7+ countries, and I’ve never once had a bad experience with a staff member. I’ve always been treated respectfully and kindly. However, at the Siem Reap Pub Hostel, I felt threatened, scared, and extremely uncomfortable. Let me describe the most dangerous incident. Please keep reading until the end. I’ve never given a 1 star in 5+ years of google reviews. That’s how bad this experience was.

Despite falling ill with a severe stomach ache and not being able to leave bed when I woke up, the manager refused to consider a refund for the morning sunrise tour. I understand his reasoning, but I felt sick to my stomach both physically and emotionally when he disrespected me. His harsh words only added to the discomfort, ending in his words “I don’t want to ever do business with you.”

Another bad experience with the manager was when he yelled at me for minor mistakes like forgetting to take off my shoes.

What truly shocked me was finding out that he told his staff to lie to me, like that the sunrise tour was “full” for the next day, even though it wasn’t! This exposed his dishonesty. This behavior made me question the overall management of the hostel. His staff seemed scared to talk back to him.

However, the most alarming incident occurred when the manager physically intimidated and tried to assault my friend. The staff couldn’t find the key that was left in the towel, and they wanted my friend to retrieve it as they were telling him to leave. The manager kept screaming “find me the key!” My friend knew it was somewhere in his room, in the towel, but after being screamed at and intimidated, he didn’t feel safe to go back in the room. The manager lunged at my friend, repeatedly trying to corner him with his staff, while his wife ripped off my friend's shirt, leaving it broken. We have pictures and videos of the shirt situation. The situation escalated until other hostel guests had to intervene to prevent further harm. My friend ended up retrieving the key, even after his shirt was ripped. Then, the staff blackmailed him, saying they’d call the police if he didn’t delete the video he took of the staff harassing him. I wish I was just making this stuff up, because this left permanent trauma for me and my friend.

The manager created an uncomfortable and unsafe environment for guests. I strongly advise travelers to avoid this establishment unless they are prepared to encounter what we did. I’ve never once had even one bad experience in any hostel I’ve ever stayed at, until...