79 Sisowath Quay
Phnom Penh
+855-77-503-144

The California had changed location and moved north along Sisowath Quay since we last stayed there in 2008, but the friendly and helpful atmosphere was the same. This is the best place to hang out in Phnom Penh if you want to meet expats and travellers and, of course, benefit from the experience and wisdom of Jim, the proprietor.

Downstairs there is a large well-stocked bar and a free pool table. It’s a spacious place so even though it can get a little busy at peak times there’s plenty of room to relax. If you sit at the bar, you can be sure of meeting some interesting characters.

Whilst not billing itself as being accessible for disabled people, it would be possible for a wheelchair user to eat, drink and go to the toilet. (So many places let you eat and drink but have completely inaccessible toilets.) In the California, there’s a small ramp up to the WC cubicles and both have extra-wide doors.

Upstairs (no lifts) consists of 10 guestrooms, all beautifully clean and nicely furnished. It’s fair to say the standard rooms are “compact” but the space has been put to good use and we were very comfortable there. We had hoped to book a deluxe room but had left it a bit late and the deluxe rooms were already fully booked. Jim therefore put us in the best standard room, which we were very happy with.

I can’t imagine finding anything better for the price. ($27-$35 per room per night.) It’s in a great location, clean and comfortable, and the bar is a lot of fun. We were a little bit surprised when we received our bill at the end of our stay. The staff member asked if we were shocked because it was so much, but that wasn’t the case at all. Quite the opposite – we had expected it to be more, so that was a nice surprise.

There’s a good menu of breakfasts (served all day), Mexican food, some Western favourites and Khmer food. The food is very reasonably priced and tasty. We ate there several times.

There is free WiFi throughout, in the bar and in the rooms. Smoking is allowed.

To sum up, the California will be our first choice of where to stay when we next visit Phnom Penh. Highly recommended!

Find out more on their website:
http://www.cafecaliforniaphnompenh.com/

Author: Kay McMahon

Kay has been an expat for over 20 years. She set up the British Expat website more than 10 years ago, whilst living in London and missing the expat life. These days she spends much of her time lugging computers and cameras around the world. (Dave gets to deal with all the really heavy stuff.)

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The FCC’s website describes it as a “boutique hotel” offering “refined luxury, casual elegance”.

I’ve never been entirely sure what really defines a boutique hotel. Perhaps it’s more easily defined in terms of what it isn’t – not a chain, not uniform, not large, not cheap. On those counts, the FCC certainly qualifies. There are other FCCs, in Phnom Penh (the earliest – it was the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, hence the name) and Rangoon, but three properties hardly constitutes a chain, and they’re each distinctive. As for the size, there are just 31 rooms and suites; and the room rate is just over £110 a night. (However, we booked through Agoda, who were offering four nights for the price of three; and the room rate does include breakfast – of which more below.)

Arriving and checking in was straightforward – helped, of course, by the fact that even at the leisurely pace of Cambodian traffic the airport is only about a quarter of an hour’s drive from the town centre. After our welcome drink – a refreshing cold herbal brew – we were shown to the room.

The first impression we had of the room was how small it seemed. The total space available is 36 square metres, which is a reasonable size; but the bed seemed to fill most of the space, and the desk most of the rest of that. And there was only one chair, which meant that I had to sit on the bed over my netbook while Kay lorded it at the desk with her laptop. (WiFi is available throughout the FCC and is free.)

However, the bathroom is quite generously sized, and seems to serve as a dressing-room too (the wardrobes are in it, including the safe). The toiletries were good quality, too, although the shampoo and shower gel came in little pottery bottles that were refilled every day, rather than the small plastic bottles you can take home to decorate your own bathroom. On the downside, the shower (which was a rain shower) was in the ceiling above the bathtub rather than a separate cubicle. One curiosity was that the bath tap didn’t have a spout. Instead the water came out of a recess in the slate-tiled wall, just above the tub – at first glance, it looked like some kind of recessed soap dish, except that it sloped away from the wall. Strange!

We ate every meal at the FCC. (This was partly dictated by the fact that Kay had injured her ankle just a few hours after our arrival and was effectively confined to a wheelchair and thus to the hotel for the length of our stay – you can read more about this on our sister site, Can Do Can Go!.) Room service is available 24 hours a day and is no more expensive than ordering food at the restaurant, which is very reasonably priced itself. The quality of the food is generally very high.

Breakfast is included in the room rate and can be eaten either in your room from 04:30 to 10:30, or in the restaurant from 07:30 to 10:30. (The early start can be explained by the fact that many tourists choose to visit the Angkor complex at dawn to watch the sun rising over the temples.) The servings are generous to say the least; we were caught out by this on our first day as we’d ordered one toasted banana bread from the Continental options (for Kay) and one poached egg “Benedict” from the hot options (for me). They brought us two servings of each! Put it this way – we didn’t bother with lunch at all during our stay. Our only gripe would be that the poached eggs were sometimes too cold when delivered to the room – a great pity, as otherwise they looked as if they would have been delicious (and they certainly were when we ate them at the restaurant).

The staff were pleasant and very helpful. This proved invaluable when Kay injured her ankle – apart from kindly offering Tiger balm to try to help ease the pain (unnecessary; we’d already sourced some ice from a nearby petrol station shop), they also managed to locate a wheelchair somewhere in the city and arranged the hire for us. And when we asked for information about the organisation they’d hired it from, they immediately produced a leaflet from the NGO concerned for us to keep.

The bar and restaurant were pleasant enough places to sit and drink or eat at, with an ornamental pool separating the bar area from the restaurant’s ground floor. (I saw the upper floor briefly – it looked like a comfortable place to eat. But of course wheelchairs can’t go up stairs, and there was no lift.) Although the bar’s billed as staying open until midnight, there didn’t seem to be anything much doing after about ten o’clock, and the staff had virtually shut the place by eleven – a bit of a downer if you’re wandering in after an evening out and fancy sitting down for a pleasant drink outside.

Overall rating: 4 out of 5
It’s not particularly cheap, but it’s a nice quiet place to stay, with friendly staff and good food. We’re very likely to go back!

Author: Dave McMahon

Dave left school at the age of 30 with the odd O-level (like Ancient Icelandic) and a doctorate in something so obscure even he can't remember what it's about. He then joined the FCO. Dave has travelled to most European countries (including several that don't exist any more, though he denies responsibility), as well as Bangladesh, Barbados, Thailand, St Vincent, UAE, Laos, and many more. Having managed to escape from London in 2001, Dave's now resorted to taking unpaid leave to stave off the evil day of his return.

Despite several visits to South East Asia over the last two decades – and even living there at one stage – we realised a few months ago that we had been to Singapore only once in all that time, and that was for only two nights about 15 years ago. Our impression then had been that it was expensive and rather sterile.

A trawl of various hotel review websites revealed that it was still every bit as expensive as it had been relative to other countries in the region. Nevertheless, we found a hotel which looked as if it would be comfortable and well enough equipped for our needs, and reasonably close to the centre of things (an undeniable advantage of Singapore is that you’re never too far away from anywhere you want to be). So it was that we arrived at the Robertson Quay Hotel early one Thursday evening in mid-November, having booked – as always – through Agoda.

Check-in was handled mostly pleasantly and efficiently, although there was a little bit of head-scratching when we pointed out we’d asked for a double bed and a smoking room. But we got there in the end.

The room itself was pretty tiny, with a simple double-sized bed (we estimated it to be 1.5m wide) rather than a king-size or even queen-size. The bedside table (there was only one!) was on one side of the bed, the room’s light controls were on the other. With a room that size, the air conditioning was more than adequate – we kept it turned off most of the time.

There was space for only one chair and desk-cum-dressing-table, but as there was only one cable connection for the Internet that was OK. The connection’s available for what the RQH describes as a “nominal” fee; S$ 5 is certainly a good deal less than many hotels charge for a 24-hour connection.

There was, however, space for a mini fridge (not a mini bar – it was empty!) which was pretty much what you’d expect of it and well up to the job. Dave nipped over to the nearest 7-Eleven and stocked up for our first evening; on the second day we discovered a branch of the Cold Storage supermarket chain and did a more comprehensive shop there.

Although there were tea-making facilities (a kettle and the necessary crockery, with a couple of teabags and sachets) There was no drinking water in the room, which surprised us – but apparently the tap water in Singapore is drinkable.

The bathroom (which was a wet room) was, er, compact – enough room for the bog, a reasonably sized sink, and a small shower. The sliding door (more space-saving) was a bit difficult to manage, and had to be pushed quite firmly to the right, to the full extent of its travel, to enable the catch to engage.

The safe door was also a bit tricky, although the instructions were clear enough. One of the hinges was loose, so the door needed a bit of more or less forceful persuasion to get it into position.

As with far too many hotels, the internet connection software was a bit difficult to manage. Initially Kay couldn’t get logged in. Dave tried using his own machine and got on straight away; then tried again with Kay’s and was told he was already logged in. After a while he hit on the idea of logging out – but he had to guess the URL of the logout page because the instruction sheet provided by reception didn’t mention it. Once he’d done that, it worked OK.

Breakfast was included in our room rate but would have cost S$8 otherwise. We struggled bravely out of bed to try it on our first morning, but didn’t bother on the second – and we wouldn’t have chosen to pay for it if it hadn’t been included. The selection was pretty mediocre. (About the best that could be said for it was that the bananas were nice. And how hard is it to find a nice banana in South East Asia?)

The road is quiet; even in our room on the first floor we weren’t disturbed. And the view of the Singapore Repertory Theatre opposite was pleasant enough, enhanced by the greenery in the window box below our window. On our first evening we found a couple of places to eat and drink in the streets just round the corner from us, including a lot of Japanese and Korean restaurants. And then on our second evening we discovered a whole lot more places along Robertson Quay itself, some of them really good, and making us wish we’d booked longer than the two nights we’d allowed ourselves. Ah well…

Overall rating: 3½ out of 5
Despite the shortcomings, the RQH is really not a bad place to stay. Yes, it’s a small room, and not everything is as well maintained as it might be, but it’s a good deal cheaper than the more luxurious places we’d otherwise have considered staying in (Singapore is expensive!) and the location’s pretty good. We’d go back there – unless we found something in the area that was better value, which seems unlikely to happen.