Shinta Mani Wild Opens in Cambodia’s Cardamom Forest
Bill Bensley's 15-tent camp opened on 21 December 2018 on 350 hectares bought to keep loggers out. Guests can arrive by zip line and join the rangers on patrol.
Shinta Mani Wild opened on 21 December 2018 in the south-west of Cambodia, about three hours by road from Phnom Penh. The camp has 15 tents along a river in a valley of 350 hectares, at the point where three protected areas, Kirirom, Bokor and the Cardamom national parks, come together. It was created by the designer Bill Bensley with his business partner Sokoun Chanpreda, at a cost of 16 million US dollars.
Why it was built
The Cardamom range holds one of the largest remaining rainforests in mainland Southeast Asia, with elephants, gibbons, pangolins and clouded leopards. It is also under steady pressure from logging, poaching and land clearance. The valley came up for sale as a logging concession. Bensley and Chanpreda bought it to prevent that, and conceived the camp as the means of paying for its protection.
The camp funds a ranger station operated with Wildlife Alliance, a conservation group that has worked in the Cardamoms for two decades. Rangers patrol the surrounding forest for snares, chainsaws and illegal camps. Guests can go out with them, on foot or by motorbike, and the removal of snares is a regular part of a stay.
The camp
The tents stand on platforms above the river, spaced along a kilometre and a half of rapids and waterfalls. Each is more than 100 square metres, with a deck, an outdoor bathtub and furniture in the style of a 1960s expedition. Bensley imagined the trip that Jacqueline Kennedy made to Cambodia in 1967 and asked what her camp would have looked like had she stayed in the jungle. The answer involves campaign chests, vintage trunks, leather and brass, and a good deal of humour.
The buildings were set among the trees, and Bensley has said that none were felled. The main tent holds the restaurant and the Landing Zone bar, which is where arriving guests may land: the camp offers an entrance by zip line, 400 metres across the canopy and over a waterfall, ending at the bar. Those who prefer can arrive by jeep.
The stay
The rate covers everything: meals, drinks, spa treatments, laundry and activities, with a butler for each tent. Days are spent on patrol with the rangers, kayaking, fishing, mountain biking, or on the camp’s boat in the mangrove estuary downstream, where the river meets the Gulf of Thailand. The kitchen works with foraged plants and Khmer recipes. The minimum stay is three nights.
Reception
The camp has been one of the most admired hotel projects of its decade, for the quality of its design and for a model in which a small number of high-paying guests support the protection of a large area. Bensley’s motto, repeated before the opening, was: “Never do anything twice. Experiment. Do weird things.”
For his other work in the region, see Capella Ubud, another tented camp, and JW Marriott Phu Quoc. In Cambodia, Six Senses Krabey Island and Rosewood Phnom Penh complete an itinerary.