In Reply to: worried!!! posted by nik7 on Thursday, 24. February 2005 at 10:32 Bali Time:
but I would be very concerned too. You should be able to get this kind of information from your travel agent, rather than finding out from a public internet forum. I would copy some of the comments on the Forum, show them to your travel agent and tell him/her that you should have been told about this before you booked and ask for a relocation to a more suitable hotel. If this is refused, I would tell him/her that I will keep records and go to the media on my return to Australia, if my holiday is spoiled.
This is not a criticism of the Barong. I've no doubt that many people have enjoyed great holidays there and not had to put up with excess noise or filthy behavior. And I'm equally sure that some people enjoy a holiday there, because they can act in this way and the management lets them get away with it. But with the knowledge that this is apparently not an isolated occurrence, I simply would not risk staying there.
How about the other 11 people in your group? Would they want to stay there if they knew that there was a likely chance of their holidays being ruined?
On one of my Bali trips, my first choice of hotel for the first 6 days was not available. So the agent [who I will never use again and not because of this, but for something far worse] had the stupidity to provisionally book me into the Barong, a hotel of a totally different type and in a totally different place to what I had requested. Fortunately I knew enough to say "No way!"
There's something for just about everyone in Bali. That's the way it should be and that's probably one of the main reasons that so many of us like it so much. But a good travel agent should know far more about accomodation choices than what you can get by reading the nice sounding stuff in the brochures and looking at a couple of pretty pictures. Unfortunately, in many cases, that seems to be the extent of their knowledge.