This hotel consists of two parts separated by a road. This review concerns the "villa" part of the hotel near the beach.
We stayed at an "Oceanbed Pool Villa". By definition a villa is a free-standing house. What we got was the ground floor of a small rowhouse with an upper storey that held another guest room. The immediate concern was the construction site right next to the house (see Photo 1). Thai workers works 7 days per week, so the fact that we were there on a weekend gave no reprise from the noise which was penetrating. The construction work has been going on for a long time (see the review by ckerr, London, of January 2007) and will obviously be going on for some time still. As the private pool and jacuzzi faced to that side, a peaceful swim or soak were impossible. Several houses face this side of the compound, so beware.
While the hotel compound with the "villas" is next to the sea, there really isn't any beach (see Photo 2). Even at low tide only a narrow strip of sand can be seen. Guests who like to lie on the sand have to go elsewhere or use the sandbox that is provided on the hotel grounds,
The room was large enough, with a kingsize bed. The bed is designed in such a way that it is surrounded by a ledge and has a space behind the headboard (see Photo 3). That means that the light switches on the wall next to the bed cannot be reached without getting out of bed.
The cockroach is not on the picture. There was a big cockroach on the bed when we came back to the room on our first night. It quickly scrambled to its hideaway as cockroaches do. I'm by no means squeamish - I have shared a hotel room with cockroaches before. A tropical country like Thailand is home to big cockroaches and they can be expected if you live on the ground floor. I don't expect them in a five star hotel, though. We received a written apology from the manager with a small present of incense - perhaps to smoke out the cockroach.
The air conditioning is aimed directly at the bed. For us this led to feeling alternately cold (when the air conditoning was cooling) and hot (when it was not). The choice of pillows provided didn't help. They all seemed to be synthetic and made us feel sweaty and uncomfortable.
A Bose music stand with an iPod Nano was provided and of course you can connect your own. The Bose system had occasional dropout problems. The volume control in the bathroom had only two settings: off and too loud. The widescreen LCD TV was adequate. Cable TV was provided with a reasonable choice of channels. The DVD player was connected to the LCD by the standard video output and consequently the picture quality was bad. The remote control units for both the TV and DVD player were unresponsive.
There was free wireless Internet, not very fast but usable. If you bring your laptop, be prepared to put it on your lap. There was no table in the room. There was one on the patio, but the glare from the sunlight made it next to impossible to use the laptop as the patio faced to the south. There was only a flimsy sun screen provided which didn't serve its purpose. All passers-by will also see you. Yes, the patio was facing the common grounds with guests and staff walking by all the time.
The private pool and jacuzzi are not really private. It is easy to step up to the patio and walk behind the house to the pool area. The jacuzzi only had three water jets, no air bubbles as you might expect. The waterjet control was temperamental. There was no rack to hang bathing suits for drying.
The bathroom was large, with shower only. The hot water at the sink didn't work.
The breakfast was included in our deal, but it usually isn't. The seaside restaurant serves only à-la-carte breakfast. The breakfast buffet at the main hotel restaurant across the road was good, with a fine choice of mainly western type items.
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