Around 90 minutes from Phnom Penh, Farmhouse Resort & Spa offers something very different from the usual resort experience. The boutique luxury countryside resort sits within the 150-hectare Smiling Gecko campus, a large NGO founded by Hannes Schmid in rural Cambodia.
Karin Galley and her daughter visited and she tell us about their experience.
What makes a stay here so unusual is the chance to combine a luxury resort stay with guided access to the campus itself. The hotel, restaurants, school and farms are all connected and help create jobs, training and opportunities for local families.
I first heard about Smiling Gecko about a year before our visit, when Hannes Schmid came to Singapore to speak at a symposium organised by Honour Singapore. The Swiss founder first became internationally known as an awardwinning photographer, working with supermodels, rock stars, Formula One and global brands, and photographing icons such as ABBA and Freddie Mercury. Later, he built a second career as a highly respected visual artist and painter.
A turning point in his life eventually brought him to Cambodia, where he decided to leave that world behind and create Smiling Gecko together with a local partner, Sokleap Ngon. Listening to Hannes speak was fascinating. He has enormous presence, passion and conviction, and his story stayed with me long afterwards.
Earlier this year, my daughter and I finally spent three nights at Farmhouse Resort & Spa to experience the project for ourselves.
More on resort in Cambodia
Farmhouse Resort & Spa feels more personal than many luxury resorts, which is probably why we felt comfortable there so quickly. We stayed in a spacious Premium Khmer Bungalow surrounded by tropical greenery and gardens. The bungalow is spread across two floors with a large bedroom suite upstairs and a lovely sitting area downstairs. One thing we found especially interesting was that much of the furniture and woodwork throughout the resort has been produced by Smiling Gecko’s own carpentry workshop on the campus.
The 34-room resort is spread across generous grounds with two large saltwater pools, lots of outdoor seating areas and the excellent Sanctuary Spa tucked away within the gardens. There are many thoughtful details throughout the property, including colourful fabrics, wooden finishes and student artwork that give the resort warmth and character. Although the wider Smiling Gecko campus is large and active during the day, the resortn itself remains peaceful, private and completely separate from the school and working areas.
Inside the Smiling Gecko campus
This Cambodia resort offers guests the opportunity to tour different parts of the Smiling Gecko campus – and much of our first two days was spent doing exactly that with Hannes Schmid himself.
What quickly became clear is that Smiling Gecko is far more extensive than most people would imagine. Today, the NGO includes a Western-style kindergarten and school for more than 560 children receiving bilingual education in Khmer and English, large farming operations employing more than 400 workers, hospitality training, healthcare facilities, a bakery, butchery, carpentry workshop and cultural centre. A University of Applied Sciences is also currently under construction.
One morning we visited the school just as students were starting their day. We sat in on an English lesson in the library, where the children were sharing stories about how they had celebrated Khmer New Year. It was lovely to briefly sit in on one of their lessons and hear the students confidently speaking English and laughing together.
The children were incredibly open and welcoming towards us and seemed genuinely happy and engaged. We were also deeply impressed by the quality of the facilities, including music rooms, healthcare facilities, counselling spaces, handmade furniture produced by the campus carpentry workshop and a beautiful new middle school building.
My daughter was especially touched by the visit and later commented on how wonderful it was to see children receiving not only excellent education, but also genuine encouragement and support.
Another highlight was The Gong, the recently completed House of Culture & Music. The striking circular building, designed by a Swiss architect, contains an auditorium, several recording studios, a podcast studio and music rooms filled with an impressive range of instruments and professional equipment designed to help young Cambodians develop confidence, creativity and performance skills.
Spending time on the campus, you quickly realise how much thought has gone into creating something sustainable for the long term. Even after building something on this scale, Hannes Schmid still seems full of ideas and plans for what comes next.
Farm to table
The agricultural side of the campus was equally fascinating. We toured vegetable gardens, fish farms, chicken and pig farms and growing areas producing everything from herbs and mulberries to asparagus and vanilla pods.
The farm-to-table philosophy is very real here. Much of the produce used across the restaurants comes directly from the surrounding land and you can taste that freshness immediately.
Breakfast each morning at the Farmhouse Restaurant became one of our favourite parts of the day, with tropical fruit, freshly baked pastries, local dishes and excellent coffee served in a relaxed open-air setting.
A memorable dinner at Restaurant UN
One of the highlights of our stay was dinner at Restaurant UN, the resort’s fine-dining restaurant led by Chef Mariya Un Noun.
Mariya’s story is closely tied to Smiling Gecko itself. Growing up in rural Cambodia, she never had the opportunity to attend school. She was discovered locally and first started working in the Farmhouse kitchen before her talent was recognised and nurtured through international training opportunities.
She later trained under some of the world’s most respected chefs, including Massimo Bottura in Italy and Franck Giovannini in Switzerland, before returning to Cambodia to lead Restaurant UN. Today, she is regarded as one of the top chefs in Asia. It really is quite an extraordinary story.
People regularly drive from Phnom Penh over the weekends specifically to dine at Restaurant UN, including members of the expat community and embassy staff. After eating there ourselves, we completely understood why.
The restaurant itself has an intimate and elegant atmosphere, and the seven-course menu took Cambodian flavours and ingredients to a completely different level from what we had expected. Much of the produce comes directly from the surrounding farm and Mariya’s own garden. Mariya herself came out to present each dish and explain the thinking behind it, which made the evening feel very personal and memorable.
It was one of those dinners that both my daughter and I kept talking about afterwards. What made the experience even more meaningful was understanding Mariya’s own journey and how closely it reflects the wider Smiling Gecko philosophy of identifying talent, creating opportunities and investing in people long term.
Slowing down
By the third day we slowed the pace a little and spent more time enjoying the resort itself. We relaxed by the pool, visited a nearby village and spent time at the Sanctuary Spa, where we both had massages and facials and honestly could have stayed much longer. After two full days exploring the campus, it was nice to simply slow down and absorb everything we had seen and learnt during the stay.
Why it stayed with us
What stayed with us most after those few days was not only the beauty of the resort, but how much we learnt and experienced while we were there. The tours of the school, farm and wider campus, our conversations with Hannes Schmid and the extraordinary dinner at Restaurant UN gave us a far deeper understanding of the people, culture and vision behind Smiling Gecko.
Farmhouse Resort & Spa is a genuinely beautiful resort to stay at, with spacious accommodation, an excellent spa and outstanding food. But spending time on the wider campus gives the stay a very different dimension and makes you feel far more connected to Cambodia and the local community around you.
By the end of our stay, we felt not only deeply impressed by what Hannes and his team have created, but also grateful to have experienced, even briefly, a project that is changing so many lives in rural Cambodia.
Find out more at farmhouse-smilinggecko.com, or the website of the Singapore branch, smilinggecko.asia.
+855 11 67 95 95 | info@farmhouse-smilinggecko.com
This article on Smiling Gecko resort in Cambodia first appeared in the July 2026 issue of Expat Living magazine. You can buy the latest mag or an annual subscription, or read the digital version free now.
