This all happened on my trip to Bali in May last year. Some of you know part of it. Background: first trip to Bali was in 1982 and until recently the last trip was 1993. For various reasons unable to travel back to Bali until 2004. Now an older woman, travels alone, likes her creature comforts.
This is not a JBR as such but thought you could all do with a laugh so am detailing all the things that went wrong on this trip.
In May last year a friend was also coming but backed out so I decided to go it alone. I was to spend 8 days at the Paradise Plaza Hotel and 8 days at the Ramayana.
I arrived at the Ramayana only to find out that the rooms do not have a balcony (did not know that at time of booking. Travelling on my own I spend more time in the room and like to sit out on the balcony. The wall beside the bed had plaster missing and the sheets were decidely not white. Definitely not a place I could spend 8 days in so rang my ground operator and for a price I transferred earlier to the Ramayana.
Checked in to the Ramayana, lovely deluxe room. I then went for a walk, came back to the room and there was water over the floor. It seems that either the previous guests or staff had not closed the fridge door so it defrosted. It was quite funny watching the staff member trying to mop the floor with a towel.
I went to bed that night but woke up around 3am to find the balcony door open. Needless to say I panicked, is someone in the room, what has happened, is anything missing. all these thoughts run through your head. I put the lights on but everything seemed to be in order. I went to close the door and found that the lock was still in the locked position. Very strange. There was no way I was staying in that room. ( I discovered the next day that the reticulation comes on at that time and for some reason or other that wooden door shrank, hence the door opening).
Next morning I changed rooms. The porter closed the door to the room and the extra lock fell off. I opened the wardrobe door and the safe was missing. Quelle horreur! (I know, you are all saying this is not true, but it gets worse). The safe was replaced and bolted in place and the lock was fixed.
Next morning I get up to have a shower, turn on the hot tap, only cold water. I think that maybe there is a problem with the hot water so have a cold shower. I then try the hot water tap over the washbasin and it is hot so I try the shower again and it is still cold. It turns out that the pipes were connected incorrectly, ie cold out of hot and hot out of cold. Do you think the Balinese could understand this. I had the room, the manager, the engineer and whoever else had to do with housekeeping running the taps most of the morning to find the hot water. They had originally said that I didn't run the water long enough. Eventually agreed that the pipes were back to front so instead of changing the pipes just changed the taps around.
I should mention here that after the first change of rooms I had been given a free dinner voucher.
For the first time ever that day I had decided to use the hotel laundry and that night when my laundry came back (yes you guessed it) it was damaged. I saw red, rang reception and demanded to speak to the manager. The manager came on the phone and I let fly (once again I had various staff memebers come up to inspect the damaged dress). I can't remember now exactly what I said but the upshot was that he would upgrade to one of the Club rooms on the top floor. He thought I was only there for another few days but still agreed when he found out that I was for almost 2 weeks.
I then moved in to a Club room. I had a queen sized 4 poster bed, day bed and coffee table, TV with DVD/CD player, day bed on the balcony, very large bathroom, with separate shower, separate toilet and large bath and all the bathroom accessories. I was in heaven.
Mind you I still had problems here, blocked toilet, phone that kept disconnecting but by this time all I could do was laugh.
I forgot to mention that during this I was also unwell and had 2 doctors visits.
Sorry for the length (took longer than I anticipated)but I am sure you will get a laugh out of this. I would go back to the Ramayana as the staff were great. Gusti on reception became very wary if I came in to reception. I suppose you couldn't blame him.
Cheers, Stormy