We arrived at the hotel by long tail boat and the person who met us at the ferry was great. However, when we got to the hotel our luggage was taken away and we were gestured to go “up there”, to another building. We were not sure where “up there” was but wandered up in the direction we had been shown.
We arrived at a building that seemed to be the reception and went to the desk. We stood there for several minutes, ignored by staff. When someone eventually came over to serve us, we said that we wanted to check in we were met with confusion. The staff did not seem to understand that we had a booking and were expected at the hotel. While we were standing waiting for them to sort out our status, I observed that the group that had arrived moments before us had been ushered to chairs by a member of staff and were given cooling towels and fresh drinks while their registration cards were filled in by the staff. We were left standing in the heat for another 20 minutes before the staff got round to finally booking us in. Then, we were told that our room would not be available for several hours and were pointed in the direction of another building where we were told we could obtain lunch. At no point did any member of staff attempt to show us where we were supposed to be going – we were just pointed in a direction.
We ordered lunch, which took ages to arrive. We had ordered and drunk several beers before the order was even taken and we began to wonder if this was a ploy to get customers to buy the overpriced hotel drinks. When the food arrived, it was tasteless and the portions were very small. We had already stayed at two 5 star hotels in the area for the previous two weeks and were astounded at the price of the food in the Holiday Inn and how poor the portions were in comparison to these 5 star hotels. Understandably the quality was also poor in comparison. We decided to eat elsewhere for the remainder of our stay and found that the food, service, surroundings and atmosphere at the Zeavola Hotel were much better.
Despite these problems, we decided to book a dive at the dive centre. However, it was hard to drag the girl behind the desk away from reading her Kindle long enough to find out about any of the opportunities available. It seemed that not enough guests booked diving at the resort and therefore there wouldn’t be any diving on offer for the next couple of days. We stated that we would be interested and put our names forward in case other divers came forward. But, the next day our names were still the only ones on the board and so we cancelled our booking and went to Leisure Divers just down the beach – which was excellent.
When we got to our rooms we found that they were small and cramped with a dangerously placed series of steps leading down to the bed from the entrance. We banged our legs on the bed and stumped our toes on the steps numerous times, and it was only by leaving a light on at night that we were able to navigate our way to the bathroom safely without falling up, or down the stairs. Even in daylight, as the stairs were made out of the same wood as the rest of the floor, it was difficult to differentiate between level floor and stair.
Also, as the room was not properly sealed, mosquitoes swarmed into the bathroom through the sliding door, under the front door and into the bedroom itself leaving us badly bitten and itchy. As the hotel ensure that the air conditioning cannot be left on for any length of time, unless you are in the room, we spent over an hour each night sweating and scratching our bites until the room became cool enough for us to go to sleep.
To add insult to injury, we had booked a room next to the infinity pool as we had been assured that this was an adult’s only pool and we had expected the area to be a quiet adult’s only area. However, the signs next to the pool were misleading and every day there were hoards of squealing children jumping into the tiny infinity pool. This made it impossible to swim in this pool and made the area around the pool, and our room, very noisy. This was despite the fact that there was a larger swimming pool at the other end of the site which was meant to be for families. Also, we were forced to walk to the other side of the hotel to get towels and were told that we had to return them by 6pm that day. The towels were strictly signed in and out each day, as if we wanted to steal them! This meant a trek of about 5 minutes in the sweltering heat to get a towel in the morning and then the same to return it at the end of the day. This is ridiculous – especially as often at 6pm we still wanted to sunbathe or swim.
Next, the hotel state that they provide drinking water. But each room is supplied with only two bottles a day. In the heat of Thailand in January, one bottle of water per adult per day is ridiculous. When we ordered extra water we would wait for hours and nothing would arrive until we had chased several times. Additionally, the fruit at breakfast is inedible, unless you want to scrape off the flies before you try eating it. The previous hotels we stayed at solved the problem by covering each fruit platter with a cloche – not that difficult a solution! The rest of the breakfast was not too bad, if you don’t mind hot food that is barely warm.
On departure this was the first hotel on our trip that did not give us a feedback questionnaire, and it was the only one which needed feedback. We were glad to leave Holiday Inn Phi Phi and will be staying at the Zeavola next time.