The Worst

Arriving on the island after a transfer that included a 90 minute drive and a 45 minute speedboat ride I was ready to have a long soak in a hot bath. Little did we know that my transfer was not complete. Rayaburi, a resort on Racha Island Phuket, does not have its own mooring so it was around the head to the next and – at first glance – much better resort. We were thrown into the back of a truck along with our luggage and driven along the track back to our resort.

We checked in and were shown to our room. A “lagoon view” room. The room was indeed facing, albeit with no view of, the lagoon. There was 100m of semi manicured garden between our and the restaurant, reception, laundry and activities centre which lined the beach and blocked any view of the lagoon. To be fair we did have a view from the sunroom/bathroom at the rear of our room a body of water – a sewage swamp.

I drew my hot for the next hour I relaxed, read my book and drank some wine. If only I knew this would be the last time I relaxed for the next 48 hours!

At the end of the bath I pulled the plug and the water started to drain, which not only emptied the bath but invited the sewage swamp to enter the room through the drain on the floor.

My partner chose instead to have a shower. At least the bath drained. The shower did not. When the rising tide reached mid-shin it was time to end the shower.

Using the toilet was a matter of feeling and listening for accuracy as the light did not work

These three faults were reported to reception as we went to dinner

We left the room to have dinner, arriving at the restaurant we were seated in the least aesthetic table because although it was a closed resort with only one restaurant tables had to be booked. A fact that we were clearly meant to divine for ourselves as it was not including on either resort information page or in any verbal information received during check in.

Short of burning them, I did not realize it was possible to completely stuff up a pancake. Sure some pancakes are better than others, but they are still ok. Not here. About 2cm thick and solid. Less light and fluffy, more heavy and crunchy. That was breakfast.

When it comes to drinks I am used to the regular offering of drinks by waiters wandering around between all of the guests. Not here. Go to the bar and order them yourself in a manner that actually seems more inconvenient to the staff than the guests.

I ordered a mojito and received a margarita – I should have been happy I at least got a cocktail starting with “m”. When I ordered another one later I was told they could not do it because they were “all out of jito”. What the hell in “jito”. After some discussion I guessed they meant soda water.

At the end of a day waiting on ourselves at the beach we returned to our room to shower and freshen up for dinner. As to the faults reported the previous evening?

The bathroom was cleaned. We did not tempt fate by running another bath. The shower drain had not been touched. At the house cleaning staff had agreed with us that the toilet light did not work and that maintenance should fix it.

Over a five hour period 3 other staff from Housekeeping also agreed that the light was broken and that maintenance should fix it. Apparently no one thought it important to actually pass this request on to Maintenance. Eventually someone request Maintenance should attend our room but obviously did not supply any explanation as to why. Maintenance staff arrived without a replacement globe and would take another 10minutes to return to their supplies and retrieve one.

A member of housecleaning eventually shoved her hand down the shower drain to juggle loose whatever was obstructing that pipe.

Dinner, at a pre-booked, beach-side table had its ups and downs. The food we received was tasty. But we only received half of what we ordered. We ordered entrée and mains. When the mains arrived without any sign of the first course, we cancelled out entrees. When the bill arrived one entrée was crossed off. The other was still included. After much discussion with three different staff it was removed from the bill. Not before we were told that we must have had it because there was a tick next to it on the waiters order sheet. We agreed that it may well have been prepared in the kitchen but it never appeared at out table. The following evening we were to discover how such a problem could occur.

The second day was marred by non stop heavy rain. We were confined to our room for the day reading and watching TV. In itself, no problem. We were there when Housekeeping arrived to make up the room…without a single cleaning product. No mop, broom or dustpan, no cloth, no surface spray, not even a spare roll of toilet paper. She simply picked up the bathmat, which was being used as a door mat, the mat that was now covered in footprints and full of sand. She then proceeded to use the used bathmat as a cleaning cloth. She wiped the floor, the basin, shower alcove and bathroom surfaces down with the dirty bathmat. If there was a stubborn mark that needed to be removed she either ignored it or splashed a bit of water on it. At the end of the process she took away the old bath mat and returned with a “clean” one.

In the absence of a single cleaning product I was now concerned about how clean the sun/bathroom actually was after Housekeeping dealt with our sewage problem.

The following nights dinner the waiter brought us spring rolls for entrée. We had not ordered any entrée for this meal. It was hard enough explaining to the waiter that we did not order it and perhaps it was meant to go to another table. What made it even more difficult was the waiters insistence that the spring rolls were in fact “pork ribs”.

On one day we did have a bag of clothing needing to be laundered. Following the instructions on the form we had it organized before 10am to allow time for dame day service. Come 8pm (90 minutes after the promised return time) we called Housekeeping to find the whereabouts of our clothes. We were promised they would be brought to us first thing in the morning. Come 10.30am the next day, following further enquiries on our behalf our laundry was returned to us, still damp and with a large tear in one item

On our day of departure we brought our boat transfer forward to 8.30am. The reception staff could not believe that we wanted to leave so early. We did not know where to start to explain the difficulties of our experience.

Please leave comment about your worst accommodation experience.