Shinta Mani Angkor - Bensley Collection

Shinta Mani Angkor began not as a hotel but as a school. In the early 2000s the designer Bill Bensley and his partner Sokoun Chanpreda were building a hotel in Siem Reap and, struck by the lack of opportunity for local people, started offering free hospitality training, turning their staff quarters into a simple guesthouse where students could practise. That guesthouse grew, over the years, into the boutique hotel that stands today — and the school remains at its heart, having put hundreds of disadvantaged Cambodians through free training and into work.

That origin still shapes the place. A stay helps fund the Shinta Mani Foundation, which runs education, healthcare and conservation programmes across Cambodia, and the service — warm, genuine, unusually invested — is the direct product of how the staff came to be here. It is philanthropy built into the fabric of a hotel rather than bolted on, and it gives the whole experience a sense of purpose that the design alone, striking as it is, could not provide.

And the design is striking. The whole hotel is the work of Bill Bensley, the designer behind some of Asia's most theatrical hotels, who drew on the architecture of Angkor for its rectangular columns, recessed doorways and carved detail. The ten Bensley Pool Villas are his exuberant best: two-storey duplexes set among tropical planting, filled with riotous pattern, colour, art and antiques sourced worldwide, with three-dimensional carved murals depicting the legendary King Jayavarman. Each has a private nine-metre pool, a secluded outdoor tub and shower, and a rooftop sky lounge, and comes with a dedicated Bensley Butler. Six can be joined into two-bedroom villas for families. Guests have the run of the sister hotel across the road — its pools, spa and restaurants, including the well-regarded Kroya — while the temples of Angkor wait a quarter of an hour away.