We hope that you enjoyed your time here in Banteay Chhmar. Please feel free to leave a comment or short note and let others know about your travel experiences here and throughout Cambodia.
We are always trying to improve our visitor’s experience, so we look forward to reading your comments. We hope that you will tell your friends about us and suggest they come to visit Banteay Chhmar. We hope you stay in touch and come see us again.
From the entire CBT group, thank you very much for taking the time to visit us.
I just wanted to let you know that we all had a fabulous time.
The homestays were great- very clean and comfortable and the hosts were lovely.
Our guide was very helpful particularly with my older friend. She is
75 and he was very careful leading her around in the complex. She also
felt very safe on his moto.
Could you please send me his contact details?
And the temples themselves are spectacular. I think you will have many
more tourists in future.
Thanks you for all your help organising everything for me.
I will be sure to recommend your organisation to others.
best wishes,
Natasha
I visited Banteay Chhmar in 2009 and again in early 2011. Both trips stand out among my most memorable travel experiences in SE Asia over the past twenty years.
Banteay Chhmar’s appeal is that it is a working archaeological site in one of the more remote corners of Cambodia. Guide training programs by Heritage Watch International are just now expanding the quality of learning experience available to visitors. The people, culture and history one encounters here are 100% authentic, as opposed to what you find in more touristed areas.
Travelers who share these interests (and have the willingness to give up a few creature comforts) should definitely take a couple days to discover this unique destination.
Dear Ponlok and Sopheng
Thank you once again for a most enjoyable stay. I will pass on my recommendations and wish you all the success for the future.
Hi Sophal:
The rest of the trip was awesome. You could recommend the PEPY Tours group anytime. They are very well organized. Our home-stay in Banteay Chhmar was a feature of the trip. Very clean and functional accommodation. Just what the expedition minded are looking for. The dinner on the top of the ruins was a surprise to all. We had a ball and danced well into the evening.
It is very rare to find such a nice hospitality : simple, real and with big smiles. Our host family has been great trying all the time to speak with us through a bit of french, bit of english and the help of our guide to translate. I can only recommend if you go to Cambodia to spend a couple of nights in this remote region (you will have to take the massage route first, but it is worthwhile!) There is much more to experience in Cambodia than Angkor Wat !
I wish the community of Banteay Chmar to keep their values and develop this eco-tourism to support their economic development!
Christine (France)
We both had a wonderful time with the family and wish to once again thank them as well as Pel Pet and Sopheng for everything they did to make our stay pleasant and interesting.
Best wishes,
Ernst O. Meissner
We stayed at a homestay in Banteay Chhmar for 6 nights and as each day progressed the more we got to enjoy and understand both the temple at Banteay Chhmar and the daily life of the Khmer people.
We were made truly welcome. The food was great and so was the company. We’d fully recommend visiting Banteay Chhmar and using the CBT team and their homestay programme. It was great!
Craig & Andrea from Germany
We are Jordi and Anna, from Barcelona. We visited Banteay Chhmar last May and we really enjoyed with the experience: the guided tour, the accomodation… Everything!
We stayed in Seng Ratha’s house. She and her family was very hospitable, we felt like we were at our home.
I recently enjoyed a visit to Banteah Chhmar, staying in a homestay, and going out to the main temple and many of the satellite temples with a guide. Thanks!
I don’t normally review things (I really should!), but this stands out so strongly that I felt like I owed it to Banteay Chhmar; and especially Kit Sokhoun, and Peat Pel. They were so incredibly accommodating, fun, and patient. Their desire and initiative to learn English is inspiring – with few resources to learn, they have excelled and even begun teaching school kids in order to better the opportunities of the next generation. This experience – the temples, ox carts, local children, silk workers, friendly faces, delicious food – was among the best traveling I’ve ever done. The traditional music and evening picnic at the temple was especially stand out. Thank you for this opportunity. I will hold it close for a very long time.
Danielle & Ryan, visited in mid-February 2014
I must confess that I feel a little bad about not getting round to reviewing this place before now. My family of 4 (two boys aged 5 & 2) plus my father-in-law spent a night here in April during KNY. What a wonderful experience. Seriously. I made this reservation via this website and I confess to being more than a little dubious. But from start to finish, the care that everyone involved showed made these some of the most memorable 36 hours we had on our trip up north. Mr. Tath was there to help us at every step. He even surprised us by showing up on our ox and cart tour and giving us a personalised tour of the history of the temple ruins. Amazing. It was like getting the bespoked tour you didn’t even know you wanted. And a big huge thanks to the family of “Mr. Sam” – our host family. I wish that I could include our pictures from our time there to show you how amazing it was. My sons learnt so much and had so much fun. Never had they, possibly, been dirtier but happier. They helped prepare the evening meal, as well, by collecting herbs from the field and helping to pluck the duck. A real education for my city boys. One that has served them well. Truly a highlight of our time living here in Cambodia. I would love to return; once the road is refinished 🙂
Sincerely,
Jodie Commons and Family
Sorry to hear about the North wall section collapse. On my trip to Banteay Chhmar, I took a series of pictures along the outside of the wall. You are welcome to contact me if they are needed as references in any future reconstruction.
Hi,
Thank you for your reply, interest, concern and offer to provide information. Sure, it would be great to have some photos from that section. I’m not sure if we have a complete set of photos here for that area. We can forward the photos to the Ministry of Culture, as well. You can send any photos to the info@visitbanteaychhmar.org email. Thank you again.
My Family and I stayed at this home stay over Christmas in 2013. At the time My son was 3 and my daughter 9. We had the most amazing time. We couldn’t believe how wonderful everything was and how attended to we were. The food was the most fantastic of anywhere on our 3 week trip and the days we spent walking through the ruins all to ourselves were fantastic. We had Christmas lunch and dinner in the temple with live music and our children played with the children learning English. It was a stay none of us will forget! Thank you so much!
My friend and I really loved our stay in Banteay Chhmar in December. After spending nearly a month in Cambodia, we both agreed it was the highlight of our trip.
Our homestay was lovely and clean, and the family were so friendly.
Our guide for the temple and village walks was very friendly, provided us with excellent information, and helped us learn about the temple and life in Banteay Chhmar, as well as some Khmer words. The temple itself is a work of art and the atmosphere there was something very special.
We also had the privilege to observe the english class at the GHF-CBT office. It is evident the quality of teaching is very good, and the children’s smiles is a memory we will never forget.
My friend and I were both really impressed by the work the GHF-CBT are doing, and the difference it is making to the community.
We will definitely come and visit again.
My visit to Banteay Chhmar was greatly enhanced by organising it through CBT, who provided a return taxi with an overnight in a homestay, English-speaking guide and meals. The service was excellent and good value too, the homestay really comfortable, the food was plentiful and delicious, and my guide and driver excellent and good company too. CBT involves the local people in providing services which benefit both their guests and themselves, everyone I met was genuinely welcoming, and they’re all volunteers. The temple site is extraordinary, and visiting it gives you the chance to get away from the crowds, see something very special, and experience out of the way Cambodian hospitality. Do yourself a favour and support CBT by travelling with them!
Rachel from Teddington, UK
All good wishes to you all
Me and my Husband came in March 2015. We had a wondeful stay and our big regret was that we couldn’t stay more than one night. We stayed at sreymom homestay. She and her family were really lovely, we felt like at home. The room and the shared bathroom were clean. The only disapointment was that it was really really hot inside, but also outside, we are in cambodia so, we have to deal with this… We visited the temple with a young guide, unfortunately i don’t remember his name, but he was kind, spoke a good english and provides us a lot of information about the temple and the history of this place,he also speak a little bit about other things like khmer rouge or his personnal life, and it was really interesting and touching. The food provided by the CBT was excellent, one of the best we ate in Cambodia. What people of CBT do is wonderful, those people work hard to learn english and do their best to provide a good experience to us. they are really couragous and i really hope that more and more tourist will visit this wonderful place and that the future of these people will be bright. All the best to you, CBT people, you worth it
In January 2015 a Dutch friend and I cycled from Thailand to Banteay Chhmar and spent 2 wonderful days there. The road from Chong Chom in Thailand was quite good and able to be done in 1 day. We stayed with a very friendly family and although there were some language difficulties we were able to communicate ok. The temple tour was fantastic and our guide was obviously very knowledgeable and spoke good English. Meals were great and very cheap. I will be coming back sometime in 2016. After leaving Banteay Chhmar we rode to Siem Reab to see Angkor Wat. While it was quite spectacular, the hordes of tourists and vendors does not make for an enjoyable time. Part of the attraction of Banteay Chhmar is the isolation and lack of commercialisation and obviously the smaller number of visitors.I’d recommend anyone to visit this remarkable place before it is inevitably changed.
Thank you Ken, we hope to see you again next year.
We spent two wonderful days in the village. Everything was just perfect! The food made by one of the local cooks was fresh and extremely tasty. The room we slept was clean and cosy equipped with mosquito net and fan. The family of Sril Som is very helpful, sincerely smiling all the time. Our guide Peat Pel spoke fluent English. He showed us around the village and the temples and told us very interesting facts about the history of Khmer people and culture habits. It was a pleasure to be you guest!