More Than a Place to Sleep-Villa Langka Hotel

One of the most nerve wracking parts of traveling for me is finding a hotel. I have a friend who has a similar hate and faces buyers remorse every time she books. It's hard not to when there's literally hundreds of choices in each area. So my solution? Let my husband do the dirty work. Thank goodness he's happy and willing to take it off my hands for me. And this time he was able to find the Villa Langka hotel in Phnom Penh, a gem among the hundreds of choices in the city.

When we travel we always look for the same things in our hotels. And thankfully Villa Langka filled all of these requirements.
1. Locally owned and operated aka no chains (only one location in the heart of Phnom Penh)
2. Small in size (48 rooms in total in two different buildings)
3. Budget friendly ($55 a night with an included buffet breakfast. A deal breaker when we look for hotels)
4. Location location location (just a short walk away from tons of bars, restaurants, and shops)

Thankfully in Phnom Pehn we lucked out once again. This hotel went straight to the top five places we have ever stayed. And with an added bonus of hotel security outside to watch over our bike. A must if you're renting in Cambodia.

My favorite part by far was the pool area. Since we weren't by the ocean during this trip, this was the perfect oasis in the middle of the city to cool off in the mid day heat. Many times we would site see in the morning, hang out by the pool and go back out once it had cooled off again. The overgrown trees and serene atmosphere throughout the property made you feel like you were miles from the city when in reality, you were just steps to popular restaurant and shopping areas.

There are two buildings of rooms. The first one is the original building with traditional style rooms. We stayed in the new building which were filled with about 30 simple, modern rooms which were perfect. It even had touches of bamboo and Cambodian silks throughout the room.

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Absolutely beautiful, wonderfully relaxing. Villa Langka needs to be on your list of places to stay when traveling to Phnom Penh.

What do you look for when booking hotels on vacation?

Treasures from Cambodia for Sale!

SOLD OUT

I can't tell you how excited I am for this! When I saw these elephant wallets for sale in a market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I just knew that I had to bring some back. I bought some for gifts, one for myself and I gave one away last week. If anyone searched my bag at the airport they probably thought I was crazy for having so many wallets tucked away in my bag. But then ask me if I care and you'll get a big fat nope.

Well here's the great news guys, if you entered the giveaway last week but didn't win, you can still get your hands on one! I have six of these bad boys to sell, in two different designs and you can buy them through my sponsor page. These wallets are well made from recycled concrete bags in Cambodia (how cool is that?!). So if you want your own souvenir from Cambodia, be sure to head over to my sponsor page and snag one up for yourself!

Cross Country on Two Wheels-Roadtrip Across Cambodia

On the last few trips it's become a sort of unintentional tradition to rent a motorbike and take a road trip (you can check out our one in the Philippines and Thailand). We love it because not only it is a cheaper method of transportation versus taxis or tuk tuks since it's less than $10 a day for a rental, but I feel like we are also able to see parts of the country that would have whizzed by the bus window.

In total we rode over 900 km (that's 560 miles for you USers), or the width of Cambodia and almost back again and I have the bruises on my butt to prove it. We went through cities and back country roads where the farmers were steering their ox through the rice paddies. We drove through the blazing heat, dusty roads and pouring down rain. We met farmers, school children, business owners and our guardian angel; a stranger who drove slowly in front of us with their hazards on so we could see the road through the downpour of rain. But no matter where we traveled, we were always met with smiling faces and inquisitive looks. Even though it was a long ride, I wouldn't have done it any other way.

Here are some little tid bits from our 13+ hours on the open road:

Our first pit stop was to get gas at a small family owned service station. The girls in the top picture were selling mango and salt (an interesting combination for sure) while the boys helped their father with the station. The man sitting below had worked for ten years at a hotel in Phnom Penh in order to buy this gas station. And you'll notice that on the gas pump they have a handle they have to crank in order to get the gas from the barrel, up into the glass container, then through the house and into the vehicle.

Some of the other gorgeous views along the way.


This is another one of our many pit stops where we found children swimming through lily pads and collecting lotus pods to sell and eat.

We often had 'road blocks'. Luckily this was only one cow but there were times when we had to sit and wait for a group of them to get up and move out of the way before we could keep going.

On one of our last stops we went by an area where all of the houses and buildings were up on stilts. Certain areas can actually flood so much during rainy season that the water actually reaches the bottom of these buildings.

Along the same route we found a hammock restaurant on stilts and decided to take a break and enjoy the view. Plus, who can say no to hammocks and a cold drink?

I just couldn't resist putting some pictures of cows in Cambodia because they may just be my new favorite animal.

On our way back from Siem Reap to Phnom Pehn, we left at 4:30 in the morning (definitely not my idea) in order to beat some of the city traffic and also the scorching heat that sets in late morning. Thankfully the views made it well worth it.

Even though the trip was a blast and I would recommend it to anyone traveling to Southeast Asia, there are some things that made it a whole lot easier on us, and some things that we wish we would have known:

-It goes without saying that you need a lot of cushion. On the way back I was tempted to go try and find those butt inserts to make the ride a little better. Instead we folded some of our clothes in bags and sat on those instead.
-Cover up! Even though it may not feel hot when you're riding and you can feel the wind, you're getting a lot more sun that you think you are.
-Have a water proof option. We rode during the rainy season and thankfully only got caught in the rain once. We covered all of our bags in trash bags to protect them from getting wet.
-Get an international license. We've never been asked to show ours in the countries that we have rented but it doesn't hurt to have this extra precaution.
-We bought kramas (traditional Cambodian scarves) before we hit the road. A lot of the roads we went on weren't paved so there was a lot of dirt and dust that we would have been breathing in if we didn't have these scarves. Anytime we stopped, we got funny looks because of how dirty our faces were in the areas the scarf didn't cover.

Have you ever done a road trip in another country? What was your saving grace or what was something you wish you would have known beforehand?