This is a basically a 1–maybe 2-star hotel pretending to be a 4 star hotel, complete with the exalted prices. To be fair, the beach is nice and the general layout of the resort is good. From that point on, though, everything else is pure amateur hour. 1. FOOD (BARELY): Breakfast was included in our package. Unfortunately so was food poisoning. One of my daughters succumbed to something from either breakfast the first morning or from dinner the night before. It was so severe she couldn’t keep anything down for the next 48 hours. Aside from the poisoning, which in itself is reason to avoid this place like like your health depended on it (which it does), the quality of food served was exceedingly poor and it was overpriced. That’s quite an accomplishment for Thailand where even street food is phenomenally delicious and cheap. For our first (and last) dinner here, one in our party order garlic pepper shrimp and was so overdosed with MSG he had got a headache—in my 35 years in Thailand I’ve never found a restaurant to use MSG in this dish, but this resort does, and to excess. My daughter ordered a minced crab meat dish that was 25% minced crab shell—she spent the whole meal trying to pick it out. As for the breakfast buffet the following morning, it was about what you’d expect from a one star hotel catering to discount tour groups. We came during the last hour of breakfast service and everything was heavily picked over—they do little to restock the buffet. Admittedly they did have bacon, but it had been cooked early and left out with nothing to keep it warm so if you come later like we did you just got cold greasy bacon. Their free breakfast was so bad that, for the following two mornings, we left the resort to eat at a restaurant down the street (see below), preferring edible (and safer) food over economic considerations. And then there were the menu prices, which were easily 100% higher than they should have been (or 200% if you factor in how bad the food is). Beach bar drinks were equally overpriced. At first we thought maybe the resort had difficulty getting decent food or cooks to this remote area. But then we discovered just down the street was a wonderful restaurant named Folkways where the food is 3-4 times better, 50-60% cheaper, with a much larger selection, and served in a nifty air conditioned glass room. We had all our subsequent meals there and will do a separate review for them (5 stars). (Turn right out of the resort, travel 6km, and arrive at Folkways Restaurant on the left). If Mango Beach Resort’s food had been half decent, and if they hadn’t tried so hard to gouge us on the food, we might have formed a more charitable attitude from the start. However the management probably knows they’re not likely to get repeat customers, so perhaps they’ve adopted a business model of “screw ‘em while we have the chance.” 2. PEACE AND QUIET—NEEDLESSLY SPOILED: Question, does a person, booking a beachfront bungalow in an upmarket resort do so to enjoy the beach, the sea—maybe listen to the sound of the wind and the waves? Or is it so they can listen to the incessant beat of cheesy disco music day and night? For whatever inane reason, the resort’s beach bar, which we were told was closed during the day, insisted on playing loud, irritating disco music all day long. (It was so loud we could even hear it while inside our room with the windows closed and the AC on. ) Our first morning we came out to sit by the sea and couldn’t enjoy it for the throbbing bass. No one was even near the bar—not even a bar keeper. Eventually I leaned over the bar and turn it off myself. When a staff showed up 2 hours later and cranked it back up again I had go and explain no one wanted it. He agreed to keep it off, albeit temporarily. But as soon as we headed back to our room, he cranked it up again. At least twice a day every day I’d ask them to turn the music down or off, especially during the day when people clearly wanted peace and quiet. Within an an hour or two though it would be loud again. The music mostly drove us indoors, where we didn’t want to be, and even still their disco choices penetrated our bungalow walls. Why? Why, in age of personal playlists on cell phones enjoyed privately with ear buds by every person who has a music preference, did Mango Beach Resort feel compelled to pollute their beautiful beach setting with this ear garbage? This, more than anything, ruined the beach experience for us. 3. ROOMS: We paid extra for the beach front bungalows, and we’re glad we did as the cheaper alternatives were a ways from the beach. The basic layout of the rooms were good with on notable exception: the toilet was separated from the rest of the bathroom facilities which would have been okay if the toilet included a sink. But instead if you wanted to wash your hands after your business (as I would hope you should), you have to schlep from one bathroom to the other. Also unpleasant was the fact that the toilet door was vented, so there is no sound (or smell) barrier between the toilet and the main room. Be prepared for some extra intimate moments with your partner. Also there was no plug outlet in the toilet which was too bad as we always travel with nightlights to find our way to the toilet in the middle of the night without having to switch on bright lights. No such luck here. Housekeeping did a good job for cleaning, but they unfortunately finished off each visit by spraying the room excessively with a heavily perfumed “air freshener.” We would then have to leave the windows and screen door open for the next hour or two to get real fresh air to air out the stench of the artificial “air freshener.” They also littered the room with eucalyptus sachets, which smelled nice in small quantities but they put 5 in our room we moved 4 of them out to the porch. Lastly, the rooms had no phones. Granted , with such abysmal food no one contemplated room service. But if we had requests (like hey, how about a mat outside our door so as not to track beach sand into the bungalow, duh?), or when the AC suddenly stopped working, each time we had to hike from one end of the property to the other to lodge a request for service. Really relaxing, that. 4. INTERNET: The internet mostly didn’t work the entirety of our 4 day visit, which was a serious problem because I brought work with me that was time critical and I couldn’t do it. It was also a major disappointment for my family as they wanted to use their own devices (iPhones, iPads, computers, etc), but couldn’t. This was an incredible inconvenience and put a real damper on the experience because we specifically choose an upmarket hotel because we wanted (and needed) a good and reliable connection. The owner made excuses, making a big deal over the fact he had recently installed new hotspots and repeaters all over the property, but since their basic internet service to the hotel itself wasn’t working most of the time, these gadgets were mostly useless. It did cross my mind that perhaps the hotel owner had unwittingly purchased an internet service package that limited the total number of connections in the hotel to 10 or 15. This would explain why some of got a connection some of the time. But even so, the connection would drop regularly. I really got the sense the management didn’t know whet they were doing or how to solve problems when we brought them to their attention. 5. SMART TVS: We didn’t come for the smart TVs but given this hotel’s set up I thought this was worth mentioning. Each room has a brand new smart television but, by their own admission, none of the staff knew how to operate them, so for most guests they were just black slabs taking up counter space. I figured out how to get ours working once they brought me the tv owners manual, but it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. Guests should have be able to access their own YouTube and Netflix accounts, but since the internet is so poor this was of course out of the question. The TVs also allow for iPhone and iPad mirroring—to let you project shows onto the tv. I got the mirroring feature to work with my iPad, but because the repeater link was too poor (or the tv was cheap?), the movies would never load. We wanted to do a couple movie nights in the evening. We succeeded at this, but ONLY because we brought our own a) movies on external drives, b) computer, and c) our own hdmi cable. 6. PARKING: Again, not a primary topic, yet noteworthy nonetheless. I suppose the owners thought they were being helpful by constructing a shaded parking area along one side of the parking area. Unfortunately the contractor they used sunk posts into wide concrete footings that were raised 18 inches off the ground and that could not be seen by either a rearview mirror or our backup camera. This, combined with the fact that two small cars barely fit side by side between two posts, meant for a very snug fit for parked cars. Thanks to this stupid design we ended up getting a beautiful scrape on our back left bumper. A staff passing by said offhandedly “yeah, that happens about once a week.” If it happened that often, you’d think the management would post a sign alerting drivers of this risk. But I guess that level of thoughtfulness must’ve been a stretch for them. We really regretted our stay here. We paid a small fortune for 2 premium bungalow for three nights and consider it money well wasted. What looked from ads like a 4 star paradise in the middle of nowhere—and they certainly priced their rooms as if it were—quickly revealed itself to be an abysmal holiday experience thanks to the astounding ineptitude of amateurs pretending at the hospitality business. I would change the “Mango” to “Man, go elsewhere.” Give this place a miss.…