Should I Book Accommodation In Advance? No – often you can negotiate a cheaper price when you are face to face wth the owners. No – you can see what the room is actually like before you pay. How clean, how bright, what’s provided, etc. Yes – often you are guaranteed a booking, though not always.. We are in SE Asia after all. Yes – popular, low cost, very clean, highly rated Trip Advisor places may be booked out, especially in high season. Our Experiences Our first stop was Malaysia and I was feverishly looking up TripAdvisor, hostelbookers.com, hostelworld, booking.com, Airbnb, etc. for cheap but clean accommodation. I was going…
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Tavee Guesthouse – Bangkok, Thailand
Price 500 baht What A clean large double room, shared bathroom with warmish water, fan only, bottle of cold water on arrival, bars of soap, toilet paper, strong wifi in room Where Behind the National Library, Sri-Ayutthaya Rd, Soi 14 (walk towards the temple at the end of the street, and it’s in an alleyway on the right, before 7-11). View Tavee Guesthouse in a larger map Comments This is a great deal in Bangkok. It’s difficult to find something nice and clean for under $20, despite the hundreds of options, but Tavee excells at being a budget, very clean, tastefully decorated, organised guesthouse. We took the double room, shared…
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Holiday Inn Express Review – Bangkok, Thailand
Price 2,970.41 baht What A clean double room, air-conditioning, Western bathroom, hot shower, cable TV, kettle/coffee/tea in the room, two bottles of drinking water everyday, buffet breakfast from 6-10am. Cool view of Bangkok, especially in the evening. Where Near Siam Square, and the major shopping centres such as Paragon, MBK mall, Siam Centre, Pantip Plaza etc. Closest Skytrain station (BTS) is the National Stadium, literally just outside the BTS Comments Through a very amusing series of events where we very nearly had no where to sleep in Bangkok, we ended up at the Holiday Inn Express near Siam Square. (Treat yo’ self!) Centrally located, we have found an oasis of…
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Soutchai Travel Agency Guesthouse – Pakse, Laos
Price 40,000 kip fan room 60,000 kip air-conditioning What A basic double room, shared bathroom, hot shower, wifi in room, small balcony Where View Nangnoi & Soutchai Guesthouses – Pakse in a larger map Comments A surprisingly nice room for 40,000 kip. Dark wooden paneling with a large bed. Very stuffy during the day but was pleasant with the fan switched on during the night. Downstairs is a travel agency managed by one daughter who speaks English. There were two bathrooms downstairs inside, and a few squat toilets outside where they also have some poorly located ‘bungalows’ for 50,000 kip. Bathrooms were not the cleanest, but usable, and I believe…
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Nangnoi Guesthouse – Pakse, Laos
Cost 70,000 kip (LAK) What Clean fan room, en-suite bathroom, hot shower, wifi in room, double bed, balcony Where View Nangnoi & Soutchai Guesthouses – Pakse in a larger map Comment Run by a Laotian couple with their two children, this is a highly organized guesthouse. There are only about 10 rooms and each are located within the same building were the young family also live. The room was impeccably clean and comfortable. The bedding was white and we did not use our sleep sheets. Nangnoi rents motorbikes out at 60,000 kip a day, or 50,000 kip if you take it for a few days. They also provide a drawn…
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Vietnamese Sleeper Coffin – Part II
After our last horrendous experience on a ‘sleeper bus’ (where a bus is converted into a room with top and bottom bunks) we swore we would never experience it again. But we were forced to take one up from Dong Hoi to Hanoi, and luckily we knew what to ask this time. First time from Ho Chi Minh, the lady at the travel agency said there were no seats/beds at the front available, so we agreed to the back seats on the condition there was no bathroom next to us. What she failed to disclose (even after I had asked her several times) was that the back beds are so…
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Angkor Reach Guesthouse – Phnom Penh
We ended up in Phnom Penh three times as all roads lead there and we had to go past to make it from South of Cambodia, back to North and then out of the country – via a bus to Vietnam. We first stayed at The Fancy Guesthouse where we paid $16 per night for a clean, but windowless room. When we stopped over for one night in Phnom Penh for the second time we decided we didn’t want to pay this much considering it was literally a stop over – 8 hour bus to get there and then the following morning another 8 hour bus. We visited a couple…
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Kampot Accommodation
Once all of the Westerners in the squished up mini-van were dropped off in Kampot – coincidentally infront of a commissioned guesthouse, we set about trying to find some sort of accommodation. The information centre had no maps, and no information on the attractions of Kampot to give us but did mention one newly opened place, Paris Guesthouse, so we walked a street behind the riverfront and found it. Paris Guesthouse Brand new building. Good location if being central is your priority. However, Kampot is so small that you can walk everywhere quite easily. In a new building next to Captain Cham, a cafe & travel agency. Paris offered us…
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Palm Beach Bungalow Resort at Koh Rong
We decided to stay at Palm Beach Bungalow Resort on Koh Rong. Palm Beach is different to other accommodation on the island as it’s actually on the other side of the island, instead of within the rowdy Touch Village side where you will find stray dogs attacking tourists, people off their faces on alcohol and/or drugs, and local kids stealing things from your room while you sleep – (horror stories we heard from the manager of Palm Beach who used to work at Touch Village!). Took a 2.5 hr boat to Koh Rong with ‘Beast,’ a big Estonian who has spent the last few years in Cambodia and has no…
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Review – Golden Butterfly Villa
Seven days later, and we’re still in Siem Reap. In ALL due part to our amazing accommodation at Golden Butterfly Villa. As the sister company to the Golden Temple Villa down the road, Butterfly already had an established name, and colour scheme (a bright, but tonally pleasuring shade of orange covering the buildings and the rooms), but has gained a top ranking on Trip Advisor in its’ own right. The Villa has been running for 6 months, and everything is modern and new. The staff especially, are a credit to the villa, and are incredibily accommodating and friendly. We chose this place after spending two blissful nights at Antanue Resort…
