Shinta Mani Wild, Cambodia
Beyond the World Heritage treasures of Angkor, a new raft of jungle and beach adventures is launching in south-west Cambodia, writes HELEN ANDERSON.
The humidity is rising on the jungle floor, and so is the adrenaline. What started as excitement at the base of a tower thrusting into the canopy teeters now, at the top, towards fear. The most anticipated new resort in Asia in the past year has a check-in procedure like no other. To enter the jungle-camp fantasy of Shinta Mani Wild, a traveller flies to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, drives three hours, then jumps on a war-era Jeep for a short transit into the south-west wilderness. Hidden in the jungle is the aforementioned tower – climb it, throw on helmet and harness, and run right off that edge. My first experience of zip-lining is in this green void, hurtling along a 380-metre line. The treetops seem close; the river far below. There’s a giddy pause on the penultimate platform, then I take the plunge again, hurling myself over a waterfall and towards the bar, aptly named the Landing Zone, and into the arms of the camp’s general manager, Sangjay Choegyal, who unzips his guests from the zip-line and hands them a drink. There’s a more conventional way to check in, of course, but the slug of tequila in the pineapple and bay-leaf soda on arrival won’t seem so indispensable.
From aerial arrival to anti-poaching patrols with rangers, orchid-hunting to fly-fishing with gibbons, Bensley Collection – Shinta Mani Wild is built for adventure and extravagant fun, but also with uncommon purpose. The story begins in 2010 when the prolific resort designer, Bill Bensley, and his Cambodian business partner, Sokoun Chanpreda, bid at government auction and bought a 350-hectare logging concession surrounded by three national parks in south-west Cambodia, a highly vulnerable plot deep within the last relatively intact wilderness area in Southeast Asia. Bensley describes it as a “buy-first-think-later moment”. “We had no intentions of destroying it,” he says, “but without a clear vision of what to do with it.”
On frequent expeditions in the next few years they discovered the extent of illegal logging, mining and heavy poaching on their plot and in the surrounding Kirirom, Bokor and Cardamom parks. The wild idea of building a remote “high-yield, low-impact” camp took shape, with the primary aim of funding the protection and conservation of the forest.
Bensley and Chanpreda have been at the vanguard of sustainable tourism in Cambodia since the early 2000s, when Chanpreda opened a hospitality school in the grounds of his Shinta Mani Angkor hotel in Siem Reap. That school grew into the Shinta Mani Foundation, now with programs spanning education, micro-finance and healthcare. The foundation’s running costs are covered by the owners and their four Shinta Mani hotels, and by donations from guests.
At Shinta Mani’s latest project, the jungle camp funds a ranger station on the property, managed by