Gym Amansara Short Review <br>I'll just keep going back to Indonesia as thats where I was first wowed by Aman and have been so happy ever since.&nbsp;<br>I think this reads like some cranky guest who can't be pleased but I'll leave it up since Ericka brought it up.I just returned from Sri Lanka on the 6th of March and the "we're not in Indonesia anymore" was used on our trip as well. The has been the case in the last year at Amankora, Amanyara, and Amanwella. In Sri Lanka the resorts biggest problem comes with design, the rooms offer little privacy. Housekeeping does not come into your room more then twice and many times you would come back to the room with it looking like you left it. Room service had to be called twice or more to come get the dishes and you would find them still there hours after you returned from an outing. At Amangalla you had ten towels in the room and at Amanwella you had four and you had to use one to wipe up the water that ran out of your shower, flooding the bath area.We hated this resort and could'nt wait to leave. The food was not good and lack of a chef was not acceptable. I know the person in charge of the food was trained well in Sri Lanka and was very nice but the selection and choices where not good. You felt like the resort was about to close and they just had the minimum selection. The fruit was not great either. I'm ranting again but I will wait to tell the rest when I hear back from Amanresorts which has been about two weeks now since I was told I would hear from the office in Singapore.<br>At Amanyara housekeeping had to be told and shown to place towels on the cushions located on the sundeck over looking the beach outside the room. Room 128 has am amazing beach thats yours alone, somone should have placed towels on the rocks so you can grab a towel when you exit the water as well. The main pool had problems keeping the lounges with fresh towels and dirty dishes remained for hours.

Check In Check in was exactly as expected. We were met airside by the Aman rep, who completed the visa process for us and escorted us to the classic Mercedes for our unhurried journey to Amansara. Even after the short flight from BKK, the cold towels and iced water were very welcome, and the trip in was interesting and relaxing. The somewhat anemic air conditioning in the car was not a problem, even for those (like me) who sweat when the word "humidity" is even mentioned in passing.Upon arrival, Astrid (GM) and Daniel (Chef) greeted us and we were escorted to our room. As this was low season and a special occasion (our 15th wedding anniversary), and because she is just a wonderful human being, Astrid upgraded us to a Pool Suite. After a brief tour of the facilities and the room, and a couple of edits to our itinerary, we settled in very quickly. Astrid's actual greeting to us was "Welcome home!" which sounded a tad corny at first, but really grew on us. Amansara became our better-than-actual-home for the next four nights. Room The Pool Suites are lovely and, at least in our experience, spacious (ours compared very favorably in terms of space to suites we have had at PHNY and Pen BH). The room is open plan, so perhaps "studio" is a better word than "suite" - there is no divider between the sitting area and the bed, for example. I for one much prefer the open-plan layout, but then again my wife and I have much the same habits in terms of bed and waking up times, so it is not an issue for us. I very much liked the layout, with the notable and welcome absence of a television. We did not come to Siem Reap to watch TV!The bed was firm but very comfortable, the wifi was fast and stable, and the air conditioning worked beautifully. We could have our room meat locker cold at night, as we generally prefer, and a more comfortable temperature during the day. The pool itself is very private and while small, was a lovely way to relax after temple visits. The weather was quite hot, so the shaded areas of the pool were much more inviting to us than the full-sun of the main pool area.We found that there was adequate storage in the room for clothes both hung and folded, although a couple of times we had to hunt around a little for outlets to charge various devices (there is one behind the mirror at one sink, but not the other, for example). The bedside clock held an Aman iPad mini but also charged my own iPad perfectly well using the thunderbolt connector. Service Service is where Aman is meant to shine, and service is what I felt like I was paying for. We were Aman newbies, so maybe that colors my impressions, but .... wow!Service quality was apparent in so many ways: the laundry done beautifully every day, and the room cleaned by invisible angels; the mini bar kept stocked and the towels folded just so; the small gifts that ran from the incredibly useful (a scarf each, which was a counter-intuitive necessity in the heat) to the delicious (kampot pepper cookies) to memorable (a matted B&W photograph).Nothing was a problem. I mentioned to Chef Daniel that we had loved calamansi limes for limeade when we were in KUL some years ago. True to his word, he bought several kilos and made delicious limeade for us at all times during our stay. He even sent some with us on our picnic lunch journey and made sure it was available during our village breakfast.We made tweaks to our itinerary and activities a couple of times, and those were accommodated without question or fuss. We were greeted by name by Astrid and Daniel every day, and later by the F&B manager, Roman, who had been away on business the first couple of days of our stay. Service really came to the fore for us on our outings, which I will cover below in some more detail. Dining I am a food snob. I own it, and don't apologize for it. Overlaying that, I had a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE experience in KUL some years ago and am still to this day suffering its extremely unpleasant after-effects. Suffice to say that I was more than a bit ginger about going back to SE Asia, specifically from a food perspective.Chef Daniel did an outstanding job. The food was daily offered in both Westerm and Khmer forms. I have no mode of comparison for how "authentic" the Khmer food is, but it certainly was delicious. He made this utterly lovel sambal to go with some ribs one night, and gladly made it available for me to have with poached eggs for breakfast. (Try it, if you haven't experienced sambal and eggs before!). It was much more citrus and kaffir-limey than the Indonesian sambal that I have had most often before, and just wonderfully spicy.The Khmer food ranged over both vegetable and meat-based dishes, and we tried many of them. I can't think of a one that we thought was less than delicious, and many of them would feature highly on the "Best Things I Ate in 2017" list if I were pedantic enough to keep such a thing. From the light and flavorful summer rolls to the young pumpkin curry to the utterly delicious green breakfast curry (which really is the best thing I have eaten so far in 2017), the food was a real highlight.The breakfast pastries and coffee before we set out each day were fresh and light, and the fruit an unending source of joy. The picnic lunch was ample the day we went out, and the snacks provided on the boat for our Tonle Sap ride were similarly wonderful: just a thoughtfully-crafted and sized amount of food, tasty and sufficient without being so filling that you longed for a Tums and a good lie down.A couple of practical notes: we were on a package that included breakfast and either lunch or dinner daily. As a practical matter given our itinerary, we had some pastries, fruit and coffee delivered very early before we set out, and ate dinner each evening at Amansara. On one day we came back from our touring in time for a late breakfast, and had that as well. I think Amansara rightly takes the view that the package gives a generous interpretation of what "counts" as breakfast (i.e. pastries if that's what you want, and/or a full sit-down breakfast in the restaurant). We tend not to eat lunch while on vacation, so found the food inclusions to be ample, tasty and an absolute highlight of the trip. The alcohol costs were a little striking (my wife's Tanqueray and tonic was US$18, I recall) but I spied some spirits at the airport that were

Not sure why the section on Dining reads the way it does. There looks to be a sentence or two cut off that should read, in full "The alcohol costs were a little striking (my wife's Tanqueray and tonic was US$18, I recall) but I spied some spirits at the airport that were <$80/bottle duty free, so I think that the pricing at Amansara is a function of the cost rather than a rapacious intent. Unlike the spirits, we found a couple of very reasonably-priced bottles of wine and spent 2 or three days working our way through them at dinner."

Apologies but on the edit screen I see the full text but it somehow got cut off in the posting. I am open to questions and comments, with apologies for how long it has taken me to write the review.

Great great review!

thanks for sharing and happy anniversary. Astrid really is just a good person. I know Amanjena was sad to see her leave but Amansara sounds like a perfect place for her.

Fdw

It sounds like Amansara continues to be in excellent hands. Thanks for the review...and welcome to the Amanjunkie family!

We have already started saving for an "Amans of Bhutan" trip in 2022, our 20th anniversary. My wife is hooked on Amans! What have I done?!?!

It'll never end... my wife has long ago stated that she will go anywhere there's an Aman... it's the reason they call them "junkies" (do I qualify; probably...)

FDW

Better than expensive handbags!

Thank you for the wonderful review, and welcome to the #Amanjunkie world!

Thanks a lot for your review which brings back good memories. Just curious about the Tonle Sap excursion: Since you were there in the dry season (and we at the end of the rainy season): Was the floating villages on dry land? I have heard that the lake is many times larger during the rainy season so I guess this is the case, but hard to believe since they were far from land when we were there.

brilliant, and very well said at the end!

Musken, the floating villages were still floating, although the lake was (Bunthan said) quite low. To us it still looked absolutely massive so it is hard for me to really picture what it must be like in the wet season when it swells 5x. We were extremely lucky with the weather in that the week we were there is generally when the end of the dry season - the locals call it the "hot" season, without irony - turns to the beginning of the wet. The relative lack of water did not diminish our lake excursion.

Another interesting side note from the lake excursion was the ride home at night. All along the side of the road there were small tarps set up with fluorescent lights at the top and rectangular pail of water at the bottom. Bunthan explained that these are locals catching insects: crickets mainly, but also scorpions, black beetles and assorted other creepy-crawlies. They rise at midnight to harvest the bugs and sell them to market vendors, who cook them for food the next day. It really was fascinating to see, and a reminder that for all the long days I put in, I really have no idea what hard work looks like compared to these small villagers.

Thanks for taking me back to Sara... what a wonderful report! Surely won't be your last Aman?

When we landed and looked down at Siem Reap from above, there was so much water everywhere that we for a moment thought that there had been some sort of a massive natural water disaster which the European newspapers had forgotten to write about. We were scared for a moment that our holidays would be ruined completely. But of course, once on the ground, we discovered that this was not the case and we had a great time (and lots of sunshine as well).