High-end travel is becoming one of the most profitable slices of Southeast Asia?s booming tourism industry, with the sector predicted to outpace Europe?s over the next decade. Yet as Logan Connor discovers, an increasing amount of these well-heeled travellers are eschewing the luxury bubble for more ?authentic? experiences.
Treetop dining at Amansara
I am floating in my private saltwater pool inside Siem Reap?s swish Amansara resort, sipping a fresh lemon juice and pondering my plans for the following days. Perhaps I?ll witness a traditional Khmer Apsara dance performance after I finish dinner. The night will have to be an early one, I decide, as I?ll wake up at 5am the next morning for my personal tour of those magnificent, crumbling temples inside the Unesco-protected Angkor Archaeological Park. The humid afternoon could be spent on the wide, breezy Tonle Sap. Amansara boasts a superbly restored wooden vessel on which guests can enjoy bird watching and a glass of prosecco while cruising the biggest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Or maybe I?d swap that experience for an authentic Khmer cooking class at the resort?s traditional Cambodian wooden house. It?s a postcard-pretty structure that looks over the Srah Srang baray, a wide reservoir in the temple complex that served as a royal bathing pool in the 10th century Khmer empire. This experience-led luxury travelling, explains Amansara general manager Sally Baughen, is what affluent tourists now want. ?The world is a muc...