Private Pool Bungalow

This unique place has a style all its own.Our wooden Khmer Bungalow has been designed for your comfort and relaxation, in phase with the appeasing Cambodian landscape. Here, we bring together traditional housing and modern standards, so our guest can fully enjoy their stay. Our Bungalow named "Khem", it is a name of Khmer Traditional musical instrument, Music goes with harmony, and that is precisely what we now wish our guest: a most harmonious stay. The space Our philosophy While Cambodian rural architecture has been extensively studied by leading researchers such as Madeleine Giteau in her Short Treatise on Modern Cambodian Architecture, 1971, and more recently the late Darryl Collins and architect Hok Sokol in their magnificent book Cambodian Wooden Houses; 1,500 Years of Khmer Architecture, 2022, the sad fact is that traditional housing has been disappearing at a too fast pace from the countryside and, obviously, from urban development. At Dontrei Villa, we love these houses. Because they tell us of the Cambodian past, of the cleverness and humility of the past generations. Because they are things of beauty, harmoniously blending into their natural environment – sit on the balcony of any of our houses and you’ll get the feeling. And because they are surprisingly adapted to modern life, with the wooden walls gently absorbing the day heat, and releasing it at dusk. In the last years, the movement for rescuing and rehabilitating traditional houses has become a powerful trend in Japan. The Koryoya, ‘good old houses’ in Japanese, are attracting investors, developers, and just lovers of a serene way of life, and demand is high, for instance on this website. Dontrei Villa founder and director Davy Chan, along with husband Ly and a team of carpenters, has rescued and repurposed some eight traditional houses since 2019. Gently dismantling these time-honored structures, moving them with care to our grounds, redesigning them while keeping their harmonious proportions, replacing damaged timber and rooftiles: this is a labor we undertake with our heart. Even for the new buildings, the Pond Villas, we used repurposed wood from traditional houses that were too small or too damaged to be recreated as such. We are proud to contribute to the preservation of Cambodian heritage, by giving a new life to these ancestral houses and allowing travelers to experience the feel of traditional countryside life while benefiting from the comfort of modern installations. 07:59