Since opening at the end of 2011, Mushroom Point has become one of Sihanoukville’s hot spots, meaning that booking in advance is recommended even during low season. It actually has two locations, one ‘garden’ site and one beachside. The garden spot boasts big, round bungalows that look like thatch-roofed mushrooms. Inside, round beds complete the gently offbeat picture, offset by smart, terracotta tiled floors and walls made from plaster and thatch.

Here are the mushrooms.

On the beach, you can check into one of the beach mushrooms, much simpler affairs, made from thatch but also featuring the funky round beds. You can’t reserve the beach huts, but have to rock up and hope for the best. The dorms, which are on the garden site, are the best we saw on Otres, or anywhere come to think of it, featuring an airy room with well-spaced out round beds providing plenty of comfort. The dorm beds are actually double-size so comfortably sleep two, an option not frequently available to travelling backpacker couples.

Mushroom Point garden bungalows — in a world of their own.

The gardens are carefully landscaped and include herb and vegetable beds where some of the ingredients for the guesthouse’s excellent restaurant are grown. The restaurant is worth a mention in its own right, and is recommended by many other guesthouse owners as the place to go in Otres for food, especially pizza. We’re also informed that their fish amok is stellar.

Mushroom Point beach bungalow.

In fact, they have no option but to make good pizza. Anyone who puts a sign outside their door saying “We have good f*!#ing pizza” is under a serious obligation to actually make good f&!#ing pizza because if they don’t we will all laugh at them. Really hard. They make their own dough, and also all of their own breads, including an intriguing Eastern European flatbread called lepinjas. It is like a cross between pita and nan, and they serve it stuffed with chilli con carne ($6), and chicken or pork schnitzel ($5), among other things. They also make their own muesli.

The vibe here is super-relaxed, but not so much they lose their class. Even beachside, which is not quite so louche a hangout as some others along the strip. Highly recommended.