4th January 2011
Kuraburi Greenview Resort really is a hotel with no redeeming features. The gala dinner you’ve already heard about. The room itself is comfy enough, but we’ve paid half as much for just as good in Thailand. Dinner last night was rubbish, a peculiar tasting yellow curry and some awfully chewy fried fish. Breakfast was worse; nasty scrambled eggs prepared with diligent care in front of us but still nasty, stale coffee way too long in the pot and the sweetest, nastiest fake fruit juice I’ve ever had. If I’d ever allowed “Sunny D” to pass my lips, I suspect it would be similar. There’s groves of flippin’ fruit trees everywhere around here! Why oh why oh why do you give us vile artificially sweetened rubbish shipped in from god knows where? Breakfast was especially disappointing because the breakfast on New Year’s Day was lovely; tangy rice soup with shredded chicken and a sort of dosa/pancake made with egg and drizzled with condensed milk. It now transpires that this was a special breakfast, probably because for New Year’s Eve the hotel was full of Thai people out for a special celebration while today (and I guess every other day) it only has western customers and presumably doesn’t believe that we could possibly like Thai food.
Where was I? Oh yes, no redeeming features. They also charge for WiFi, more than £1 an hour in a country where lunch is typically 80p. Charmingly, if you logout before the hour is finished the timer resets and you still have an hour when you login again – so that was okay. The staff have barely any English, bizarre when 90% of their custom seems to be western tourists, and are also the most dim and unenterprising bunch I’ve ever been served by. These guys have the vacant stare down to an art form.
In fact, our only pleasant experience was when we left. The girl at reception told us that the local bus stops on the main road near the hotel at 8:30, so we were there at 8:20. The hotel bellboy came out to see us, to explain that she was being daft and the bus actually comes at 9:00. So we stand around waiting like lemons. The bellboy stays with us, and then has an idea and goes to the nearby roadside cafe to appropriate us a couple of chairs. We sit by the side of the road and I also have a very nice cup of freshly brewed coffee to wash away the burnt taste of the breakfast brew. When the bus hurtles around the corner the bellboy throws himself into the road to persuade them to stop.
One redeeming feature, then: the bellboy is a good bloke.
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