Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, Sihanoukville – Episode 1: From the Ground Floor to the Thirteenth Sky

At the gates of Kampong Dewa, on the road to Otres, a twenty-five-storey tower has redrawn the Sihanoukville skyline. Cambodge Mag spent a late-August weekend there under a monsoon sky. This is the first of five episodes: the arrival, a lobby watched over by a legendary archer, a room that opens onto the hills and, at two o'clock, a tea that takes the high ground.

The ground-floor lobby: Arjuna, his elephant and his naga, surrounded by emerald glass pebbles and pink lotus

An archer in the lobby

It was raining over Kampong Dewa when the car pulled up under the porte-cochère. Nothing unusual for an August Saturday on the coast, but rain has a way of washing new façades and making hotel lobbies feel even more welcoming than they intend to. The Arjuna Solitaire's lobby does more than welcome. It tells a story. The hotel opened on 28 May 2025 as Arjuna Resort & Spa, the group's first property outside Indonesia; it now goes by Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, has adopted "The Legend of Luxury" as its tagline and already appears in the Michelin Guide's Sihanoukville selection. A great many promises for a twenty-five-storey tower of 236 rooms. The lobby is the first answer.

At its centre, on a gilded plinth, a white archer draws his bow. He stands on a caparisoned elephant with amber ears; a green naga winds around the bowstring and closes into a circle above his crown. Around him, emerald and copper glass pebbles on slender stems, pink lotus in crystal vases, a bed of pale green gravel, all beneath a ceiling of hammered metal that throws the light back like the surface of a pond. This is Arjuna, the archer prince of the Mahabharata, and the hotel has taken care to explain why. A framed text near reception, in four languages – Khmer, English, Indonesian and Chinese – reminds guests that the hero owes his legend not to his victories but to an inner dilemma between duty, love and moral courage. It is in his name that the staff call themselves Royal Guardians. One smiles at the phrase at first, then forgets it, because they live up to it.

The rest of the lobby feels like the display case of a collector with taste and room to spare. A ridged black bust, a raw stone resting on two bound volumes of Architectural Digest, translucent acrylic forms, screens of pierced brass behind which a navy-blue lounge can be glimpsed. The uniforms follow the same logic: wine-red or sand jackets, embroidered collars, a brocade sash across the chest for the hostesses. Neither folk costume nor international tailoring, but something in between, much like the house itself, born of an Indonesian group, JHL Collection, and settled on Khmer soil.

A cabinet of curiosities in the lobby: ridged black bust, raw stone and two volumes of Architectural Digest

Thirteenth floor, a suspended lounge

Check-in does not happen downstairs. The lift carries guests to the thirteenth floor, where the hotel has installed what it calls the Sky Lobby. The doors open onto a ceiling studded with crystal drops – hundreds of them, imported from the Czech Republic and hung on invisible threads beneath a vault of rippled metal – and onto three arched windows that framed, that Saturday, a landscape of green hills drowned in mist.

Underfoot, a carpet patterned with teal and sand waves runs the length of the lounge. Midnight-blue sofas backed in cream leather, black side tables, lamps with copper shades. And, set in the middle like an apparition, a grand piano that is entirely transparent, acrylic and brass, with its white tufted stool. Nobody played it that day, but it does its work all the same: children stop in front of it, and so do adults.

Reliefs of Arjuna run along the walls, and a collection of art and craft objects continues the cabinet of curiosities begun downstairs. The bar occupies the far end of the room, its backlit shelves forming an orange grid where the bottles line up. Two hostesses in red uniforms greeted us with cool towels. The formality lasts only as long as the forms; after that, it is smiles and a key.

The thirteenth-floor Sky Lobby: crystal ceiling, arched windows and a transparent grand piano

A room over the monsoon

The room keeps the promise of the "vertical journey" the hotel has adopted as its motto: one goes up, quite literally, and the first thing one finds is the window. A broad floor-to-ceiling pane opens onto a swell of forest, bluish hills in the distance and, that day, rain streaking the glass. Seen from here, Sihanoukville is nothing like the building site it is too often described as. It is a green coast, breathing.

The hotel offers nine categories, from the 35-square-metre Premier King to the 97-square-metre Junior Suite and Executive Balcony King, by way of the 45-square-metre Premier Atrium rooms with a balcony over the pool or the skyline. All share the same vocabulary, which the Michelin Guide sums up in three phrases: patterned carpets, warm-lit coffered ceilings and smart glass that clouds over at the press of a button. The rest is a matter of materials. Panels of dark wood frame the bed, a king in white linen crossed by a runner of blue tweed. Two frosted-glass lantern lamps stand guard on either side. On the facing wall, a backlit shelf serves as a miniature cabinet: two red guardian lions on a plinth of black marble, two bookends in human silhouette, a bowl of emerald velvet and, on the lower shelf, the white teapot, the coffee machine and the water bottles. The bathroom doubles down with two round basins on a slab of veined marble, two rolled towels and, once again, the window over the hills.

The details do the rest. On the round table, beside a bottle of wine and two glasses, a bowl of fruit and three macarons – pistachio, mango, black sesame – resting on a bed of red beans in a small terracotta cup. Tucked beneath it all, a little children's book in Khmer: the story of a tortoise crossing the finish line in front of Angkor Wat. It was meant for the youngest of our trio. He did not put it down until dinner.

The room: dark panelling, king bed and, at the back, the backlit shelf that doubles as a cabinet of curiosities

Arrival touches: fruit, macarons on a bed of red beans and a Khmer-language book for the youngest guest

The bathroom, twin basins and a window over the Kampong Dewa hills in the rain

Two o'clock, thirteenth floor: the Socie-tea

Back to the Sky Lobby. Every afternoon from two until five, the hotel serves what it has christened the Socie-tea: an English afternoon tea, reworked, at USD 28 net per set. We took a table by the windows, the rain still falling outside, a pink lotus opened in a glass bowl at the centre of the table.

The service comes in two stages and on two stands. First, a large circle of pierced brass, like a temple screen, with three tiers: on top, roses of smoked salmon set on squares of dark bread and cream cheese, crowned with a basil leaf and a yellow petal, alongside small filled brioche buns; in the middle, squares of savoury cake and mini sandwiches; at the bottom, crisp tartlets of marinated salmon and mushroom, scattered with lotus petals. Beside it, a black tray with warm scones under a napkin and three small bowls – apricot jam, red-fruit jam, cream – each resting on its own porcelain spoon.

Then the second circle, the sweet one. Two pistachio-green macarons and a red-fruit tartlet on top; two chocolate opéras and two apple crumbles topped with a curl of meringue in the middle; at the bottom, two cubes of mango checkerboard cake and two glazed raspberry domes on a sablé base, finished with a spiral of spun sugar. The tea, loose-leaf, steeps in a glass pot.

A maître d'hôtel in a sand-coloured jacket with an embroidered collar sets the stands down himself and introduces each bite. This is not a reinvention of afternoon tea, and it does not try to be. It is a ritual performed with care, at an altitude where rain becomes a spectacle, for three people, the youngest of whom, leaning into the stand as if it were a Christmas shop window, had worked out before we did that the bottom tier is the one to start with.

The Socie-tea served in the Sky Lobby: two brass stands, savoury on one side, sweet on the other

A rose of smoked salmon on dark bread and cream cheese, with lotus petals as decoration

The sweet tier: macarons, opéras, apple crumbles, mango checkerboards and raspberry domes

By the time we left the table, the mist had lifted from the hills. One floor down, the twelfth was waiting: the infinity pool, the gym and the spa. That is the subject of the next episode.

Practical information

Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, Kampong Dewa Resort, Otres Marina Road No. 833, Sihanoukville. 236 rooms and suites over 25 floors. Socie-tea Premium Afternoon Tea: daily from 2 pm to 5 pm in the Sky Lobby (13th floor), USD 28 net per set. Rooms from USD 160 net (Premier Atrium King or Twin, complimentary minibar on arrival); the "Arjuna Indulgence" family weekend package from USD 188 net includes dinner, evening tea and spa and dining privileges. Book direct at arjuna.jhlcollections.com for a 10% saving. Otres Beach is ten minutes away by car, Sihanoukville International Airport about twenty.

Next – Episode 2: the twelfth floor at golden hour, the infinity pool, The Workout and Arjuna Spa by Sandjong.