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There are only a couple of traditional hostels in Siem Reap, but there are many budget hotels that will appeal to the Siem Reap hostel crowd. This area has undergone a huge amount of development in the past decade or two, and many new concrete hotels have sprung up. This has left most of the older places competing for the budget travelers and the Siem Reap hostels crowd.

The main reason there are few traditional Siem Reap hostels is that the prices for budget hotels rooms are so incredibly cheap. You can literally book yourself into a private room for around $US2 per night, so you won’t find many people clamoring to find a dorm bed in a situation like this. Of course you can find international standard hotels that go up in price and through the roof, but most of these are aimed for the bus-tour crowd who get forced into generic rooms as part of a package. These places will have a powerful air conditioner and cable TV, but once inside your room you’ll have no idea of where you are, and what’s the point of traveling if that’s that happens?

Of course the main attraction in the area is the Angkor Archaeological Park, which is about 20 minutes drive from the center of Siem Reap. Since no places are close it doesn’t matter just how close your Siem Reap hostel or hotel is, but it is important if you are in the center of the city or not. The nightlife and night markets in Siem Reap are legendary so booking a place in the center is highly recommended.

Even though so many of the Siem Reap hostels and hotels you’ll see on these listings pages are incredibly cheap by Western standards, it’s still best to reserve in advance. Cambodia is one of many Asian countries where the hotel scene is incredibly competitive and is closely tied in with the transportation industry.

If you just turn up in Siem Reap and ask to be taken to a nice hotel or hostel, you will definitely be taken to a shady place that hands out large commissions to the taxi or tour operators who brought you there. Those places tend to be dumps, and they don’t bother advertising through search sites because they can fill themselves up just with visitors brought through this scam.

And who pays that commission to the taxi or motorbike driver? You do, of course. A room you might have gotten on your own for $US5 per night is now US$10 per night for the same thing, and half of that goes to the taxi driver who dropped you off. If you book a place before you get to town you can carefully consider the price and everything they offer, as long as their location, and then be sure you are getting what you really want instead of what the taxi driver wants you to do.

And even though there are a few hostels in Siem Reap that have dorm beds, all of them also have private rooms and most of them are so cheap that the dorms aren’t really too attractive. If you’ve got a large group they can be fun, but otherwise the privacy is worth the tiny extra fee for a private room, even if it’s one located in a Siem Reap hostel.

Hostels in Siem Reap