Quite an informal resort hotel, not pretentious in any way.

I paid a walk-in rate of B 1,250 per night, which is much cheaper than the internet rate so by Phuket standards it wasn't terribly priced.

But the rooms are old and tired and dark, the pool is too small to swim in, what's more I was nearly killed by a falling coconut which landed 1 step in front of me on the pathway around the pool - sounds quite amusing but I'm sure it would be no laughing matter if I had been just 1 or 2 seconds earlier!

The rooms have internet but I had to bargain with the management who said only 1 user per room - how ridiculous!

They allowed me to order a la carte breakfast since there was no vegetarian buffet breakfast, but it was so oily that I didn't bother ny more after 2 attempts. Cooked breakfast starts at 8 am too - far too late for a holiday hotel.

Lastly, I needed to check out early. I gave 3 days notice but instead of just thanking me for giving him some notice, the male manager nearly had a heart attack! He started wittering on about their terms and conditions which are posted on Agoda.com and elsewhere (none of whom I booked thru so entirely irrelevant). I informed him that I'd gladly pay whatever penalty I had signed agreement to ... which was none. :)

Thankfully, he dropped such claims after that.

It is almost quiet. The rooms are ok. There are lots of mosquitos and lizards in the rooms. There is problem with water pressure. There is often no water in shower. The swimmingpool is good but not clean. It located 10 minutes walking from beach. LCD tv with lots of canals.

My husband and I were already expecting a bad experience at this place after having problems with our booking but nothing that bad. We had arranged this accomodation for 3 nights more than a month before we would check in and wrote the "hotel" to confirm the booking. We received a very worrying message from Paul Mahler saying that because we booked our room late (??), most of their rooms were already booked and if we decided to stay there we would have to switch rooms 3 times in 3 days. We were less than 10 days away to travel to Thailand and got very stressed trying to sort this out, first with the "hotel", then with Agoda. After quite a few international phone calls, the "hotel" confirmed that we wouldn't have to switch rooms, but at no point we got an apology or a message reassuring that we would have a nice stay.

When we finally got to Phuket at around 6 pm, after having travelled the whole day, Kevin, who introduced himself as the manager of the "hotel", told us to wait because they had to check if the room was ready. We would hope so, after all check in is at 2 pm... While we waited we were holding the booking papers and were able to read very embarrassing emails about us and our booking. From what we read, it was clear that they didn't have our booking, since they were asking each other if they knew anything about our reservation or "this guy", as they referred to my husband. After signing some papers, Kevin said that we were upgraded, since they only have 3 standard rooms (ok, so we were "upgraded" because of disorganization, not because they worried about our previous problem).

If we were already disappointed with the looks of the guesthouse (by now I think it's better to stop using the word "hotel") from the road, since the place is stuck behind two restaurants, imagine our reaction when we got to the room... To sum it up: wi-fi signal was too weak and only worked during the first night; the guesthouse provides two bottles of water a day (we didn't get ours on our last day) like any other hotel in Thailand but they use refillable glass bottles which you cannot remove from the room. That is a downer for day trips; the air-conditioning does not reach the bathroom, which gets very hot, and only reaches the bed if you switch on the fan; the bathroom itself could get an individual review... a disgusting sewerage smell, which comes from the drain, and we had to ask 3 times for someone to come and use some cleaning product but it didn't work as we had to cover it up with a piece of plastic and hold it with a glass... the shower area also has no door and the shower is actually handheld and at some points get very little water and it barely gets warm; the bed is indeed really hard as other TripAdvisor's users said and I found it also very flimsy as it kept on making strange noises as if it was about to break; the pillows are also uncomfortably fat and hard and we had to ask for some softer pillows; the tv is normally not a problem to us since it's just background noise but since I got a stomach bug and spent a lot of time in the room, it was disappointing to see we mainly had local channels, a lot of english movies dubbed to Thai and only a few watchable channels in English; the drapes and curtain rails were very old and here is one of the biggest problems, the sliding door were tilted which meant that we had to struggle to pull them together and still we had a huge gap that allowed mosquitos to come into the room.

Once we complained to Kevin about all of this he was extremely sarcastic, saying that we were in one of their newest rooms and that he could downgrade us if that would makes us more comfortable. I said that it surprised me the room was new since the smell was so bad, we had no chairs and tables outside like the other rooms and we were tucked away at the very back of the hotel and our door didn't close properly (and oh, did I mention we had no safe in the room?). He replied that he couldn't understand how we could lock the door if had a gap and promised to send someone to have a look ("a mechanic"), which obviously never happened. It is very intriguing to me that he would question us about it when the issue is so apparent! He also said that not all rooms had chairs outside and that was a special request and we could request it if we wanted to. I said that we didn't really care for it since I was feeling sick and would stay indoors anyway and that our only request was a room with a door that closed. Obviously the old table with two sad little chairs out of our door was the only thing he did something about... he didn't send anybody to check the drain or the door (we had to speak to another lady to get someone to throw some cleaning product into the drain).

He did come to us offering another room, which had the same smell and was in worse condition, with a broken shower head, older fridge, broken bedside lights... That actually made us believe that we were in a newer room, so we decided not to move as I was feeling really tired and sick and didn't want the hassle to move to something that was worse. The whole experience was awful. We felt insulted and it seemed that he didn't care at all! Actually, after this he started to avoid us and never asked us if things were better, if we were enjoying our stay... nothing! When we finally checked out we were very relieved to speak to another woman since we had no desire to speak to Kevin again. Right after we checked out he came back to his table and acted like we have never met.

This place is not a place you spend $50 a night, it is not even a last resort place. I will never return or recommend to family and friends. Stay away! Service is very poor, they are understaffed (this Kevin guy one morning made our breakfast which made us very weary) and the whole place is very rundown. Run!

I stayed here recently for 4 days when in Phuket, I should have seen a bad "hotel" coming when a week before I traveled I received an e-mail from what I assume is one of the owners or managers of the hotel - Mr Paul Mahler wrote me in reply to my request to confirm my booking with the following: "We do not feel good about your booking.
Of course we have some accommodation for you but, as you book late and most of the rooms are already booked, you will have to shift rooms 3 times in 3 days.
We are afraid that these are not the best conditions to celebrate a wedding anniversary."

After a lot of "negotiation" between myself, Agoda, Mr Paul and 3 international calls to Agoda later he managed to have sorted out my problem of not having a room for the 3 days, problem solved? I though so.... that was until I arrived at the hotel.
I was greeted by Kevin who introduced himself as the night manager, pinned to my booking form which I had to sign was a string of e-mails between himself and Paul, showing that they had got a booking from Agoda, but the hotel had not acknowledged and therefore forgotten my booking, if I remember correctly the first e-mail he asked "do you know anything about this guy?" But OK, Kevin said to me that my room had been upgraded to a superior room as a "present" for our 4th wedding anniversary, still not acknowledging the mountain of e-mails between Paul and I and still not acknowledging that they had mad a mistake with the booking. OK, they told me that they were getting the room ready (at 6pm way after check in time) and that we would be able to go to our room soon.
OK fair enough we then were shown to a room that was at the back of the hotel, according to Kevin it was one of the newest rooms in the hotel and considering that this was a $50 a night hotel, I though it would be a reasonable room, to my surprise I was showing to a room that reminded me of the days back when I was 18 and backpacking, something that you would expect to pay max $20 a night for. We were dog tired so we left our bags and started to look around the room, first thing I noticed is that the sliding door did not work properly it no longer slid, it rather jutted along very slowly, secondly when you were finally able to close to the door was a huge gap in between the doors which allowed us to be eaten alive at night by mosquito's.... thank god I brought repellent.
I sat on the bed, and then felt what everyone has been talking about, probably the hardest mattress and pillows in the world! I then went into the bathroom to (which is tiled hospital blue), has no shower curtain and has a electric shower that only gets warm if you let the water trickle out literally dripping. The basin is OK, although I found that the housekeeping staff had not been cleaning properly, as there is a ring of dirt coating the silver around the drain, and after I showered later I also found that the drains give off a rancid smell of raw sewerage which manages to circulate around the room.....honestly at this stage I was already ready to find another hotel, but my wife was sick with a gastric bug and was in no state to travel to another hotel.
Another thing I noticed is that there were outside tables and chairs in front of all the rooms except mine....
So as Kevin said to me the day before, if there were any problems we should go and speak to him, so after breakfast (which was also disappointing and consisted of Nescafe some eggs and cereal) we went to speak to him.
What happened next I honestly did not expect, I told him about the problems and was quaintly told that they upgraded them me out of the kindness of their hearts, they gave me their newest room and that they could downgrade me if I didn't watch out, and questioned my stating that the door did not close, saying "how can you lock the door if it does not close", and that they didn't know anything about the drain or the door not closing but they would send a "mechanic" to fix the door later. And he told me that the tables and chairs were a special request that all the other rooms had requested (even the very simplest). Shocked I left and went back to my room, waiting for the "mechanic" to come and fix the door and someone to come and fix the drain, or at least bring some air freshener.
Well the chairs came quickly, within 2 mins of us leaving, a rickety white table and two chairs.
But I waited and waited and waited, no-one came to fix the door, the drain. Then suddenly Kevin appeared, they suddenly had another room available, I entered to check the room out and maybe there was some truth in what he was saying about our room being the newest, cos the shower was falling off the wall in this Room, the lights were improvised, it had an even older looking blue fridge, and seemed to be in worse wear than our, I then politely declined to accept this room as a replacement. Still nobody came to fix the door or get rid of the awful smell that was coming from the drain. I then had to go to the reception again and ask another woman, to send someone to try to get rid of the smell in the drain, which was not really resolved but lessened by them spraying some air freshener and throwing some bleach down the drain. Not once did Kevin come to me to see if everything was OK, if my wife was feeling better and if the "mechanic" had come to fix the problem with the door, which he never came to fix. It seemed that in those 4 days I stayed at Kata Orient House, he actually tried his best to ignore me and my wife and even avoided being around on the day and time we had to check out.
Honestly, I have no shame in saying that this is undoubtedly the worst "hotel" I have ever stayed in (and I have stayed in a lot) and I would never waste my money staying here ever again.