a home for holidays

Of late, most hotels have been bombarding us with overused lines and cliches such as "home away from home", "your home in + name of place", "feels like home" and all that crap that goes with it... even big chains with 300+ rooms define themselves as a "home" when all you see is actually an impersonal, factory type accommodation that sells itself to busloads of toruists from wherever. What the...???!!!

A coffee friend of ours (people you meet over coffee or you run into coffee shops) asked my team to visit their home here one day and see if we can help them market it as a holiday home. Meaning, they live there but they accept a small number of guests to try out their home and sample their lifestyle.


They call it Amatao - a marriage of Japanese sensibilities (the wife is Japanese), southern French flair for the simple yet out-of-the-ordinary things (the husband is French) and of course, Khmer lifestyle since their home is in Cambodia.

Located in the Cambodian countryside 30 minutes away from the city center and overlooking Southeast Asia's largest lake, Amatao is a collection of several house structures, mature gardens, ponds and a green tiled pool.

Inside, each "house" is crowned by large, muslin draped beds and wooden beamed ceilings. Bathrooms are also large and airy. As this place is stuck in the middle of a ricefield, spectacular views are on hand in every corner.

Right down below the main house is a dead giveaway of its Frenchness - a temperature controlled wine cellar with its collection of vintages and new world favorites.

There are reading nooks everyhere, and corners where you can lounge with your ipod.

There are also massage rooms near the Japanese garden and an outdoor bath to watch the stars while wash out life's worries away...

The tea house in the Japanese garden is also a great place to hang around and be lazy. As the owners are also avid gardeners, an orchidarium housing rare Cambodian orchids and plant species is a great showcase, as well as a rose garden with French roses blooming around.

When they first told us about the concept of different cultures and styles coming in together, we thought that it was too much of a hodge podge of things, but seeing them altogether as an amalgam of their personalities turned out to be a rather interesting mix! The biggest draw though is the fact that it is a real home open to guests - not a hotel that hard sells itself to any Tom, Dick and Harry. They cook for you, their personal house help tend your needs and their own kids wander around and help serve you...

Just outside is a real cambodian village where people live in houses on stilts, where people still graze their goats and cows and where things haven't changed for the past decades (except perhaps for the occasional mobile phone laoding centers!)...

I wish we have more places like these around, and if we have saved enough money hopefully (which will be a million light years from now), we would love to build something like this...

Donations are now accepted...

batchoy memories

Have you come to a point where the best thing for you to do is give up your past?


Iloilo in the 1950's just right after the war - the Sta. Ana Cathedral in Molo

St. Vincent Ferrer Seminary

St. Paul's Hospital and College

JM Basa St., now the site of the Freedom Grandstand - with the old Eagle Theatre and Dalisay Theatre - now the Cinema Complex

View of the City from the Aduana Customs House


I am in a stage in my life called The-Crossroads-Between-Tuscany-and-a-San Francisco-Divorce-Apartment (from the movie Under a Tuscan Sun) wherein I am happily entwined with where I am now and my life that straddles along with it, but am being dragged emotionally by my past life. My past home, Iloilo, that is...

It started with the big flood that inundated the entire city by surprise - including our home. With the flood waters reaching up to the 2nd floor of our house, my mom, sister and our house help had to be fished out from the bedroom by our neighbors. We are very much thankful that they made it.

When the water subsided, however, it was a different story. We lost almost everything that we had. From all our appliance down to our photo albums, even all my negatives and old art works. All those years bundled up in memories suddenly gone in a zip! With catastrophes like this still projected to come (an intensity 4 earthquake just hit the city two days ago!), I am worried that my family might not be able to last another storm. That's why to my mom's hesitation, I asked her to give up the house and move to Manila, Guimaras or even with us here in Cambodia.

Is it wise for us to abandon our past in order to find security in our future?

I am still pondering about it, but as I think more about how unsecured and risk-ridden life is back home, I am left with very little choice...

the house of joyce

I had a fantastic opportunity to shoot the house of another author - Joyce, an American who has authored several books about Angkor's world heritage temples.

Tucked away from Siem Reap's bustling developments, her property is on a tight unpaved road leading to the countryside but still within easy access to town. The house is done in traditional Khmer Village style and is superbly interpreted with fine teak and Cambodian wood. There are two main structures in the property, one is the main house and the other is a guest house.

As water is a primary element in Khmer homes, several lotus ponds are positioned around the property, but the most romantic element here is a stream that runs through the perimeter walls and is capped by a covered bridge (ala Bridges of Madison County).


the main house on the left and the guest house on the right


a lotus pond on the main house. The living and dining areas are very much open to the elements


the bedroom


a lounge on the balcony


the balcony on the 2nd floor of the main house


the office and library


steps leading to the guest rooms


a room in the guest house


another room in the guesthouse


room detail of the guest house

In full tribute to Khmer culture, furnishings inside the house were done by local artisans in local materials such as silk, brass, terracotta and wood. And if that's not enough, the perimeter walls were laid using laterite - the very same base stones used in the building of the Angkor temples a thousand years ago.

The sheer dedication and attention to detail lovingly imbued in the building of this house is pure artisitic inspiration for me...