I stayed here for a couple of nights in November 2011, while attending a friend's wedding at another resort.

Upon arrival, I realized that I had apparently gone and booked a whole villa for myself by mistake via a deal on the Trip Advisor website, but what a fortuitous (and not-too-expensive) mistake it turned out to be. Although the hotel is right smack on a busy major road, I was lucky that the room was set back far enough from all the traffic noise and it really felt like resort-living indeed. The room even came complete with a little personal swimming pool with a fountain within a walled compound with a wooden latched door. The four-poster bed with mosquito netting was comfy, and the bathroom had a little sunken tub/shower area. 2 bottles of drinking water were also provided daily.

The only issue I had with my stay here was that the food was really not very good. It would be far more wothwhile to check out the food options along Jalan Monkey Forest or Jalan Hanoman instead. The daily breakfasts included with the booking were monotonous - I would recommend choosing the Indonesian chicken rice porridge 'burbur ayam' over the rather dried out and not particularly tasty approximations of "Western" eggs-and-ham, and tooth-achingly sweet juices. The other down-sides of staying here were that the TV only had programs in Bahasa Indonesia (no cable) and the room was rather dark, so trying to read in place of watching TV was not really an option. The staff were helpful enough but English was not their strongest point and communication was a stretch. Although they were OK with booking a taxi to the airport for me, it seemed cheaper to get one off the street, and the staff had even suggested that I book a taxi myself from any of the guys touting near the tourist hot-spots the night before my flight. This felt like a bit of a risk since I had no way of knowing if the (different) guy who showed up with a random car the next morning was 'legit', but I did make my flight..

The location of Barong Resort nearer the Monkey Forest end of Jalan Monkey Forest made it easy to walk around e.g. to the cafes and shops along Jalan Hanoman, the museums and Ubud market. The hotel is worth checking out... but with the sheer variety of (and competition / deals from) similar hotels in the area , you would not be missing out on too much if you decided to stay elsewhere however. If I were to visit Ubud again, I would not mind coming back here if I was with a bunch of friends, but I'd probably like to have a go at the other hotels in the area.