Pitch camp at Bill Bensley’s Shinta Mani WILD in Cambodia
A new luxury camp in Cambodia is the ultimate jungle hook-up.
It’s optional to arrive by zipline at Shinta Mani Wild — Bensley Collection. You could be driven by jeep from a base just inside the camp’s border and that would seem a rollicking adventure in itself. But if you climb (and climb) a wooden tower, get hooked up, zoom down one of Southeast Asia’s longest ziplines, hop off at a second staging post and then glide across to the well-named Landing Zone Bar and flop into a French vintage chair, then you will really be abuzz. I feel as if I am living out a long-buried me-Jane-you-Tarzan jungle vine-swinging fantasy. I am both out of my comfort zone and bang in it.
There is much that is fantastical about this 15-tent encampment, opened about a year ago in a valley of 350ha between Bokor and Kirirom national parks, deep in the southern Cardamom hills, north of Sihanoukville in southwest Cambodia. That it even exists seems a miracle of commitment and construction, a feat that could be written off as a folly, were it not for its framework of conservation and local involvement.
US-born, Bangkok-based landscape architect and designer Bill Bensley is enjoying a spot in the sun, as it were, with a new focus to his career. While long lauded for his projects with major hotel groups in Southeast Asia, now he’s playing out his passion for the environment and community empowerment. In the case of Shinta Mani Wild, this means serious guardianship of the land, working with the Wildlife Alliance private army of rangers in its mission to remove snares, prevent poaching and fight against slash-and-burn clearances by land grabbers.
Bensley and Cambodian entrepreneur, hotelier and social enterprise advocate Sokoun Chanpreda bid for the primary growth rainforest at an auction about eight years ago. The land was earmarked for logging, and timber companies had been the likely new owners. Bensley describes it as “one of the last great wilderness areas in Southeast Asia ... in a forest the size of [New York City’s] Central Park”. The domain could, of course, have been left untouched by Bensley and Sokoun to regenerate but Shinta Mani Wild provides villagers, who might otherwise have derived income from logging or poaching, with employment and educational opportunities. It appears to be a sustainable model and while it’s easy to just soak up the luxuries and enjoy the flirty design of the camp, it’s important to realise what’s really at play here.
But back to creature comforts, of which there are many. The custom-designed tents, on stilts to allow passage of animals and ground birds beneath, are strung in a long and squiggly line and spaced well apart. Defying the modest description of tents, however, these canvas shelters are huge abodes, beside a 4km stretch of the Tmor Rung River and its tributaries, which rage along, belting over boulders, surging into three waterfalls and swirling in foamy pools.
Each tent has a freestanding metal-clad slipper tub (with spiced lemongrass bath crystals supplied) on its canopied indoor-outdoor timber deck, clusters of parlour furniture appliqued with birds and beasts, brass-studded campaign trucks doing duty as coffee tables, and cowhide-covered wet bars stocked with ice cream, bottled drinks and all the apparatus needed to shake a chic cocktail. There’s a boom-net to prevent guests from breezing off those al fresco salons into the river and the temptation to just loll here for days, idly waving a palmyra palm fan, is enormous.
Each has a botanical or jungle-themed name with decor to match across patterns, paintings and artefacts. There are direct comparisons with Capella Ubud (T+I, September 7-8), high in the hills of Ubud and designed by Bensley for Singapore-based Capella Hotels & Resorts. While the Ubud estate’s accommodation is themed around the era of 19th-century spice trade and exploration, Shinta Mani Wild keeps the theme next to nature, although Cambodian royalty gets involved. Bensley says he was inspired by the “golden years of King Sihanouk” and how “he may have hosted Jackie Onassis on a tour in 1967”. It’s easy to scoff at such a nostalgic premise but the whole shebang works as a totally posh safari camp, even down to fine crystal tumblers and decanters. But such fancy accoutrements do not detract from the intelligence and compassion of the property’s true mission.
So, the decor is consistently colourful and busy, almost high baroque in its ornamentation. Tall hardwood beds, some canopied by open gold silk umbrellas, are deeply comfortable, and luxuries such as blazing hot showers, air-conditioning and fast Wi-Fi seem like gifts from the gods in such a raw setting. As I survey my new carefree jungle appearance in an antique gilded mirror, I’m amused that a list of additional amenities that can be requested includes hair spray and a curling iron. I am snug in the Wildlife Alliance tent, No 6, with antiquarian collections of verse by the lavatory, polished teak fittings, a five-star hotel bathrobe and retro telephone and radio, the latter repurposed as a power bank.
It must be noted there is a lot of walking between tents and facilities on uneven ground and lighting is a bit sparse, although staff will lead guests by lantern at night. Sturdy shoes are essential as is a clear sense of adventure. Even though there are pick-up spots for a jeep transfer within about 300m of each tent, that seems a cop-out. Despite the scuttlings in the bush, and obscuring shadows, I forgo the soft options and walk everywhere to the high-volume soundtrack of the river and the chesty calls of birds.
Manager Sangjay Choegyal keeps things brisk and cheerful, wrangling his “wild bunch” of staff while charming everyone with a sunbeam smile. His team of so-called “adventure butlers” treat guests with kid-glove care. I am in the hands of Mac from Thailand, as urbane a chap as you’d hope to find, and a butterfly botherer extraordinaire who takes me on expeditions into thickets of wild vanilla and past delicate tree orchids to spy many of the conservancy’s 140 species, both aflutter and neatly disguised beside red-rock paths. The silver forget-me-not is not much bigger than my thumbnail. But there’s no need to venture far for such sightings. Butterflies with names such as glorious begums circle my head in a hypnotic flurry of stripes and flecks as I eat breakfast each morning at Camp Headquarters (HQ), perched on a high-backed and curlicued Bensley lime-green chair that feels like a throne.
Mac takes me out with head naturalist Chanmunny, up and up into the thick reaches of the Cardamoms. They show me a few of the infra-red cameras that track poachers and monitor wildlife corridors, the video regularly uploaded to a central computer; pileated gibbons, sun bears, pangolin and Cambodian wild dogs are particularly at risk. Chanmunny and I pore over images on his iPad as he tells me that in 2002 a freeway between Thailand and Cambodia was opened, slicing through unprotected virgin forest, paving the way, as it were, for poachers, who killed 37 Asian elephants and 12 tigers in a single month.
To learn more, guests can ride pillion on a motorbike patrol with Wildlife Alliance officers, all true forest guardians clad in camouflage and bristling with Kalashnikovs, and hear about measures now being taken in conjunction with the Forestry Administration to help ensure the survival of species such as the slow loris, and the future of threatened habitat. The rangers are based at a nearby station, one of seven across vast acreage; a board of statistics back at HQ keeps track of recent successes. On the “removed” section are listed 556 snares, 20 bird nets, 85 illegal fences and 22 logging camps.
Or guests could try meditative fly fishing based on the Japanese tenkara philosophy or head for a waterfall picnic, with champagne chilled in a rockpool. And there are complimentary botanical-themed massages with heated herbal compresses, facials and foot treatments to be had at the Khmer Tonics spa, set in a forest pavilion. Plus swims in a 30m-long “cistern” pool above the main waterfall, and food of a standard to keep any camper happy, including ingredients foraged by chef Van Det.
Meals are taken at canopied, fan-cooled HQ, across upper and lower open-sided levels or at garden tables. Kep-style blue crab cake with poached egg and green chilli hollandaise for breakfast, perchance, or handmade village noodles in a herby fish broth or banana and peanut butter souffle with French toast. Courtesy of the considerable talents of pastry chef Vuthy, the warm bread, pain au chocolat and croissants rival those of a top Parisian patisserie.
Mac is my escort, too, on the camp’s pontoon-style expedition boat. We launch from a dock about 45 minutes by car from Shinta Mani Wild and putter along estuaries of the Srey Ambel River for about an hour, passing just one fisherman. Black-capped kingfishers swoop low and red wattled lapwings stride in the shallows; swifts fly high and predictably fast. The tranquillity is eerie, the water turning to a silvery sheen as the sun lowers and shadows lengthen. Mac and I sit side by side in companionable silence as I finger my new wrist tie made from a dismantled poaching snare, a gift from Sangjay. I plan to keep it safe, a memento to ensure I never forget this extraordinary patch of the planet.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Shinta Mani Wild — Bensley Collection.
IN THE KNOW
Rates include airport transfers from Phnom Penh (three hours) or Sihanoukville (2.5 hours), all meals and drinks, spa sessions, laundry and activities. Lightfoot Travel has a 2019 package for two adults for three nights from $US7035 ($10,252), including taxes. The philosophy is high yield, low impact, with a percentage of tariff paid to Wildlife Alliance rangers to patrol the region. Minimum stay is three nights and children under the age of 10 are not catered for; the Wildlife Alliance tent has an adjacent “jungle capsule” that would suit teenagers for a family booking. Itineraries can also include mountain biking, escorted ornithological walks and nocturnal nature excursions. Each guest is provided with a waterproof backpack and survival kit of mosquito repellent, tiger balm ointment, hand disinfectant and reusable water bottle. The property is a member of National Geographic Unique Lodges. Sister estate Shinta Mani Angkor Wat — Bensley Collection is an enclave of 10 two-storey pool villas in the temple town of Siem Reap. Consider a package that spans the two.