FCC Phnom Penh

Rooms

Rooms come in different styles with an overall emphasis on business travellers – this is, after all, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. The larger Deluxe rooms - with balconies - are furnished with warm reproduction teak furniture, while the smaller Standard rooms plump for a clean business-hotel look with near-black varnish on the unadorned built-in wardrobe, and a spacious desk that wouldn’t be out of place in a Grand Hyatt. The Banteay Srey room, which overlooks a crumbling colonial mansion and the oxblood splendour of the National Museum, is perhaps the best example of the former. The Mebon room overlooking the street is a good example of the latter. We'd definitely go for the Deluxe rooms if budget and availability allow.

Beds are large, low and comfortable with plenty of raw-silk cushions so you can lounge during the day. Above the bed, each room has a panorama picture of the Angkor Wat landmark that gives it its name.

Surfaces tend to be littered with brochures advertising the various hotels, restaurants and bars that form part of Hong Kong-based Indochina Asset Ltd’s empire here. You can also dip into The Teaching of the Buddha if sleep eludes you, or a volume of pictures and poems entitled The Churning: Portrait of a People Tormented if you’d rather lie awake.

Bathrooms are very well appointed, all in a clean 5-star chain style, with indirect fluorescent and halogen lighting, glass partitions and vast mirrors. Some have shower cubicles, others large bathtubs, in either case with a rain-shower head. The toilets, bless them, come with a water gun, and if that’s not enough there are also 2 rolls of toilet paper to unspool, simultaneously or alternately, up to you.

Bathrobes, slippers and hairdryer are provided, as are shampoo, shower gel and bars of natural soap. As a nod to environmental awareness, towels are changed on request.