Linga Bar Now On Facebook

Are you a Facebook fan? We are and just recently added a page for Linga Bar. This forum allows us to add much more content, more quickly and provide more interaction with our fans than is possible through our website. So, take a moment and become a fan of Linga Bar on Facebook. View photos of recent events, leave comments and just stop by and have fun. Here is the link:

Become a Linga Bar fan on Facebook

We will be adding the hotels soon as well. Stay tuned!

It Is Over (At Least That Is My Hope)

As I said in the last post, the challenges of the Siem Reap infrastructure are difficult but we have met every challenge. After all, it is not rocket science is it? That is what keeps us going and keeps us addressing our guest's needs.

I say it is over, and what is that exactly? I believe the US recession has hit the bottom already and is on the slow climb back up. And that will be followed soon by the global economy. Why do I believe that, given that we had a terrible night of sales at Linga Bar and only one room occupied in our hotels. Well, I say that because this has been going on for nearly two years, and then the meltdown of last September and October has passed. I feel like our guests have seen the worst and our continuing to carry on with their lives. I feel this because I have talked to and met our last few guests and they echo that sentiment. Actually, the last guest of The One Hotel consisted of an employed real estate lawyer and an unemployed spouse. We gave them a great deal at The One Hotel and they loved their stay.

I say the global recession is soon to be over but we may not feel it real terms for another month or two but this is the most optimistic I have felt in more than six months. After all, we have to get on with our lives and enjoy it to the fullest, right? Of course, this is a result of the efforts of the Obama administration since taking office. I can not say enough good things about him: he is thoughtful, competent, inclusive, deliberative, etc. And the renewal of America's standing with the world is a great thing to see happen. We will get through this, and be stronger for it I hope.

Now, all we need is for you to book a room or stop by Linga for a drink. We hope to see you soon!

PS - As I have written before, there are plenty of great ways to get to Cambodia without going through Bangkok or Thailand so don't let their political dramas deter you. We are even getting guests that fly directly from the US to Siem Reap (via Seoul) which has been nice to see.

Guest Feedback And The Challenges Of Siem Reap Infrastructure

Recently we had a couple stay at The One Hotel that I enjoyed meeting and talking with each day during their four night stay. They were quite nice and seemed to enjoy their visit. So, I was taken aback when I received a lengthy letter of complaint from them after their stay. There was some validity in their complaints of course which we have taken measures to address. And there were complaints that led me to realize that our hotel was just not the right fit for them which is understandable, as we can not possibly be all things to all people. One issue they brought up are the stairs. I do not think someone booking with us would be under the impression, after reviewing our website, that we would not have stairs leading to the room or terrace. That said, the stairs are typical in Cambodian style and steeper than normal stairs for sure. Since nearly all of our guests are fit and active this has never been brought up as an issue (except from my Mom, who does not do well on any stairs let alone ours) but can be for older guests. The One Hotel was formerly a home of a Cambodian family and when we leased the building we, myself and our architect team, never gave much consideration to changing the stairs due to the cost involved and to the loss of space that would have resulted. Therefore, our suite has two sets of stairs: one leading from the lobby to the room and the second leading from the bedroom to the private roof terrace.

Another complaint that was raised in their email and was not brought to my attention during their stay was the lacking water pressure in the room. For most of the last two months Siem Reap businesses have had to deal with either low water pressure or long periods of time without any city water supply. The city is working on the main water system that runs down Sivutha Boulevard but others say it is a lack of water supply due to capacity limits of city facilities. Either way, we have been able to do our best to solve this as it relates to our guest. As I rent three buildings in this area (the building housing Linga Bar, the building that is The One Hotel, and the building next to The One Hotel that is Hotel Be, Linga Spa and AHA restaurant)and throughout this water crisis, the building housing Hotel Be has not had any water supply from the city. We have had to manually fill the water tank from a rigged system from Linga Bar where the water is usually on most of the day. This rigged system works well enough and we let our guest know so that if for any reason there is no water, we can fill the tank in a matter of minutes from our spare tank at Linga Bar which we try to always keep full.

The One Hotel building has always had water, no interruption. But the water pressure is not what it should be. I did not know until I received this guest's email the extent that it was affecting their stay: the rainfall shower in the room did not have adequate pressure nor did the terrace shower or jacuzzi. In my many years in the hotel business I have always operated under the premise that you do your best to fix problems before they arise and react as quickly as possible to new problems. Had this guest mentioned the water pressure was not adequate, we could have reacted. Temporarily we could have manually filled the jacuzzi and provided a water bucket for use on the terrace shower. Since they brought it to our attention, we have solved the issue by adding another water tank for The One Hotel and tying it into the exisiting supply so that together they form enough water pressure to make the showers and jacuzzi work as normal. Again, the supplementary water tank has to be filled manually but we can do that in a matter of minutes. My attitude about solving problems that come up as it relates to hotel operations is: If we can put a man on the moon...then surely we can find a solution to our issues.

So, going back to the guest complaint it was disconcerting that nothing was said while the guest were here but we have taken their feedback, where relevant, constructively and have addressed it. Since I meet and talk to every guest that stays with us when I am in Siem Reap, I know that the we are hitting high marks for nearly every guest. So, when our last guest at The One Hotel checked out this past Tuesday and told me it was the nicest hotel room they had ever stayed in, it certainly brought a smile to my face and a sigh of relief. Another recent guest wrote to thank us for their great stay with the subject line of their email saying "Onederful." And yesterday I received maybe the highest compliment we have had so far. This guest stayed at Hotel Be for ten nights and enjoyed their stay so much that she told me that this is the first time she is coming back from a holiday and will be disappointed to be returning to her apartment instead of her suite at Hotel Be. Now that is a beautiful compliment!

No doubt we will continue to have our challenges trying to do business in the developing city of Siem Reap that is decades behind its regional neighbors, but we will always do our best to solve any issue that comes up as quickly and as efficiently as we can. That is half the fun of the hotel business, solving problems. The other half is having fun guests that really enjoy our hotels. Now, let's keep our fingers crossed that the Siem Reap electricity supply holds out!

Another Linga Accolade

I was so happy to finally see the article written by Ed Peters that included Linga Bar. Ed interviewed me sometime ago and I recently asked him for a copy of the article. I was amazed to find out that the article was about Asia's Best Bars. We are included among some great bars in the region and it is so nice to get this amazing recognition. Even better, there is a picture of the bar with one staff member, Semah, making a cocktail while two others are mention by name: Bean and Krisna. They certainly deserve the recognition as they are the ones who do all of the work. Here is a copy of the article from Sphere Magazine:

Linga Party Celebrations

Since I did not write much the last month as I was busy preparing the staff for my absence, I missed the chance to write about two big parties we had at Linga Bar. The first party was Halloween which we have re-named Linga-ween. It is our biggest and most fun party of the year. The staff love it, the ex-pat community loves it and of course the tourist love it because they never expect to see Halloween in Cambodia. I love Halloween and we try our best to put on a good party every year. I buy our Halloween decorations in Thailand or the US and we have a lot a great decorations now that we have added more each year. This year being the first time we have had Linga-ween on a Friday, we wanted to make it even bigger so we setup and outdoor bar and added a big screen to project scary movies in the passage. Well, we were rewarded with an unbelievably fun night. A fantastic turn out and some great music. Even the huge rain storm that came could not stop the party because thankfully everyone had already arrived. The party went on until 3am and afterwards I took the staff out for some food. By the time I got home and to bed it was 6am and I had a cold, blisters on my feet but it was well worth it. Here are some pics from Linga-ween. A more complete set will be on the Linga Bar website as soon as our web designer can get to it. Next year will be a Saturday night Halloween, I can't wait!

The next party was for Linga's birthday. This year we celebrated our fourth anniversary on Saturday, 15 November. Like last year, we wanted to put on a show so I enlisted the help of Love Ramos and his friends Brewster and Vincent. They helped my staff to learn a dance routine and I picked six of the staff to perform. They really enjoyed it and I was happy to have them get a chance to make a show for our customers. We had a lip sync performance by "Apple" from Phnom Penh which was good. Last year we had three drag performers but this year I could only find Apple. She performed two songs and I was impressed with her elegant outfits. Even Brewster and Vincent performed. It was not a big night like Linga-ween but just a chance for us to thank our customers for their four years of support. Again, a few pics here and the rest on the website when we can get that done. Enjoy!

2 BE

So with The One Hotel up and running, and running into its limitations, it was time to expand. Opposite Linga Bar and next door to The One Hotel was an empty building. And I mean empty. The old structure was demolished and a new shell built. It sat empty for a long time as it was big and the rent was considered expensive. I always dreaded that someone would come along and rent it and put in some awful business that would hurt my hotel and bar (think karaoke brothel). Finally, after more than a year looking at this empty building, I started to give thought to renting it. I knew that I could add hotel rooms on the second and third floors but was not sure what to do with the ground floor. Since I am the sole owner of Linga and The One Hotel and have financed everything myself, I wanted to continue to do that. However, I did not have the money or or concept for what to do with the ground floor. Finally, I decided that I would rent the entire building and find some partners to do the ground floor.

So, now that I decided to do a second hotel, I contact the previous design team of Ivan and Lisa and we started to come up with a new hotel. I had decided the hotel would have two rooms, one on the second floor and one on the third floor, both facing Linga Bar. I was trying to decide what to call the hotel when I realized that the Khmer word for the number 2 sounds very much like BE (more like a P sound). The One Hotel = one room and Hotel Be = 2 rooms. And, I love the Khmer symbol for 2, just look at the logo:


There was only one problem: Ivan convinced me that the space on the third floor facing towards the Old Market could make a really nice room with exterior atrium feeling and roof deck. I agreed and thus it became a three room hotel. But I loved the name so I thought, what the heck, 2 will represent my second hotel. If you look at the logo and the red part it reads 2 BE, so that is where are email address came from 2be@hotelbeangkor.com

Hotel Be became the perfect solution to the limitations of The One Hotel. It gave us the opportunity to accommodate families, three adults in one room, two or three couples traveling together etc. And, with a different price structure, it enabled us to appeal to more customers. It is not like adding a three room hotel solves all of our limitations but it certainly helps to round out our little empire in Siem Reap. How we got to the final product of Hotel Be is great story, which I will happily tell on the next post.

Why One?

The One Hotel really was an accident, completely unplanned. After working at Shinta Mani for about six months it was easy to Siem Reap was just beginning to take off as a tourist destination. From about 1.1 million tourist arrivals in 2004 to more than 2 million in 2007, Angkor Wat is a wonderful new destination. My original thought in 2004 was that there were more than 1 million visitors and no gay bar in the city. Being gay myself, I listened to visiting friends say, "Where can we go out?" It did not take a mathematical genius to figure out there was demand. So, with that in mind I asked a friend who had a bar on Pub Street and he knew of a place nearby that was for rent. Located on a small little alley was a nice space with two rooms opening outwards. The space was a family residence but they were ready to cash in an move out. At that time there were only three other businesses on the street but, given its location between the Old Market and Pub Street it was an ideal alternative location.

The alley back then:



But truly, I just wanted to make a fun bar, relaxed atmosphere with fantastic cocktails and a place where everyone was welcome. We achieved that beyond our wildest dreams with a huge opening night on 12 November, 2004. Actually, I did not really invite anyone as we wanted to have a nice slow start, get organized and do some training. But, word got out and we were mobbed that night. It seems everyone knew Linga Bar was opening and wanted to come and show their support. We were not ready for the crush and ran out of almost everything but it was a great start. And in our first year of business I jokingly say we were a failure as a gay bar since 60% of our customers were straight. Never did I think that Linga would be covered in the New York Times (twice!). About the name Linga, it really is a cultural reference.

Linga on a party night:



So, with Linga Bar off and running I turned my attention to what really means the most to me, running a hotel. During the first year Linga was open, the little alley we were on started to transform into the charming lane I knew it could become. We started to refer to it as "The Passage" since it did not have a name. In the middle of 2005, my friend John McDermott signed a lease for a building opposite the bar to open his second gallery. The building next to John's was also available and I thought it could be my chance to make a hotel. From the outside I thought it would be big enough to make three or four rooms, however, when I got inside I discovered the back part was an open courtyard. Even if I built it up (at considerable cost), I would have rooms with no windows. So, I looked at the existing structure and was thinking about two rooms, one on top of the other, but it seemed to small for that. Then the idea him me: One Room! Why not make one gorgeous room, provide every possible amenity (the likes of which other luxury hotels would never include, like a laptop, mobile phone, iPod etc) and due to its exclusivity you can provide unparalleled attention since you only have one guest to serve. Well, it was genius by accident but as some people say, "I would rather be lucky than good." So, that is how the idea was born. I hired the same architect that helped me with Linga Bar, Ivan Tizianel and his partner Lisa Samboros. Together, we came up with design of what was to become The One Hotel Angkor. The rest, as they say, is history but I will tell you more of our story soon.

And now, The Passage:

In The Beginning

Yes I am jumping on the blogging bandwagon, late at that, but I came to the realization in talking to so many people about our little empire here in Siem Reap that this would be a great way to provide information and anecdotes from staff and guests. So, without further ado...