Reporting from FCC Angkor, a boutique hotel in Siem Reap that is playing up its connections to journalism

Where is it? More or less in the middle of Siem Reap, overlooking the river and next door to the royal palace. Already a hotel, in the mid- to late-20th century it became a journalists’ hang-out (although the building was never a foreign correspondents’ club, as the name might suggest, rather a member of the FCC hospitality group). 

A renovation by resort brand Avani has boosted the room count to 80 and added a cocktail bar, yet retained the property’s gentle ambience so that this two-storey boutique hotel feels at one with its surrounds. Just about every­thing – tableware, towels, toilets – was sourced in Cambodia. The finishing touches are being applied, and the revamp should be complete by the end of this month.

Where are the guest rooms? Split between two wings, with 30 in the older part of the hotel. Each section has its own lap pool lined with grey-green slate and flanked by frangipani. The FCC group’s branding - its first property was a foreign correspondent's club, in Phnom Penh - is underlined in every room by a Bakelite rotary-dial telephone, analogue radio and manual typewriter (all in working order) while Khmer design sings from the iron­wood shelves and bedhead, sheets woven by local artisans and brass geckos whose tails do duty as hooks in the bathroom.

No art hangs on the walls but they are embellished with hand-drawn aphorisms (“Morals are the bridge, alms are the food”, for example) in Khmer and English. Wi-fi is reliable and there are a dozen or so satellite television channels, but seven-year-olds may find greater diversion hammering the typewriter keys or fiddling with the dial on a rather different form of wireless. Upgrade to a suite if you fancy a bathtub.

What is there to eat? The fun starts at Scribe, an alfresco bar in the FCC’s front garden that was kick-started by British chemist-turned-mixologist Mark Lloyd.