Our final leg of the trip was at the Jayakarta Hotel. I had stayed here previously a couple of years ago and loved it, so have recommended it to many others since then. However on this trip I was bitterly disappointed with our stay. So the first part of this JBR is about this.
It seems to me that tourism has picked up in Bali and lots of the hotels are running at full or near full capacity, and the Jayakarta cant seem to cope with running a full hotel, either that or it has just gone downhill fast.
Firstly I pick the hotel rooms, rather than apartments, as I like to be near the pool, we also pay for delux rooms. The first set of rooms they gave us (which they called garden view) were right at the back of the hotel next to the apartments - with a lovely view of a staircase!! My husband and kids took one look at the rooms and said they thought they were disgusting and old. I went to reception and said I wanted differnt rooms. Was told nothing available. Complained more.... and was offered downgraded rooms nearer the beach side overlooking the tennis court which was under repair. We took a look at these rooms and thought they were actually cleaner and better looking than the so called delux rooms we had initially been given. I was also told that in 2 days we could move back into delux rooms near the pool. So we agreed to this.
First morning at breakfast we discovered that the normal area near the pool is now not big enough so they opened another area in front of the smaller pool. It was crowded and difficult to find a table anywhere. AFter a while we did - the table was grubby and we had ants on our table, and the food was really disappointing. The mi goreng was cold the patries had flies buzzing on them it was difficult and packed to try and move around the food tables and even clean cutlery was not easy to find. There were long cues waiting for omelettes and no where left to stand to join the cue. Moments after arriving we witnessed a waiter carrying a large stack of glasses be accidently knocked by a guest (as it was so squishy) and all the glasses smashed on the floor. Needless to say we didnt eat breakfast again in the hotel, even though it was included in our accomodation. And in contrast to what it had been like at our last stay I was shocked.
Also when I last stayed, the hotel was running a really stupid towel scheme, where you hand in your card for a towel and if you lose your card/towel you have to pay them $25US. When I go on holiday I dont want to be worrying about missing cards or towels - so I opted to not even use their towels as a result. The good thing is that they seem to have axed this idea and there were no cards and no problem getting towels. However, this time, to use the safety deposit box you had to sign that if you lost the key you would pay the $100US. The Jayakarta seems to be one of the few hotels who dont provide in room safes, and wants their guests to pay outlandish amounts for bonding their old fashioned systems. I noticed that lost locker keys at Waterbom park were far less than this. I also noticed that they now have glossy new room service cards in the rooms with glossy $US price tags to match, and signs up telling guests they are not permitted to bring in any food or drink purchased outside the hotel (which I promptly ignored).
After 2 days we moved to the foyer building with rooms directly in front of the pool. On our first night my husband was awakened by some rustling. As we had already found a lizard in the safari park hotel - he expected to find a gecko or similar in the room. Which doesnt really bother either of us. He turned on the light and walked over to the fridge and gave it a little jiggle, only to have a bloody great big brown rat run out from under the fridge and under OUR BED!!!. He jumped, I screamed. As our interconnecting door was open - we couldnt be sure whether the rat stopped under our bed or ran into the next room where our kids were sleeping. We called the hotel who apathetically did a halfhearted job of looking under things with a torch and lifting the bed/matress. The rat was no where to be seen. The sugar packets on top of the fridge had been chewed and we found rat traps on top of both our wardrobe and the room next door. So clearly either the hotel has a rodent problem or knew they had rats in these rooms and let them anyway. I can tell you that I didnt get much sleep that night and after this we couldnt wait to leave the hotel.
The only positive things I can report about our stay here was that the atmosphere out the front of the hotel on the beach at sunset was great. Also the gardens and pools are really nice at this hotel, although my kids reckoned that the pool near the beach was over chlorinated and their eyes were red even though they hadnt even put their heads under the water.
We tried several different places to eat on this trip but the Flying Piano on Jalan Werkudan was where I had my most enjoyable meals. The steak melted in my mouth, it was delicious. Others had chicken or pork snitzel, chicken Maryland, chicken sate, pan fried potatoes and pizza.
On poppies 1 can also recommend for cheap meal Kedins, Tree House, Bagus Pub.
I also had several treatments at the melasti spa and my hubby had his first massage. I thought about getting extensions but ran out of time, although did see someone getting them done while my daughter was getting foils done. They sell the extensions by the set and they appear to be the proper human ones and they dont glue them in they use the proper heat pincers. The 30cm length is 500000 per set and each set has 20 pieces. They quoted me 2000000 for 4 sets which is still hundreds cheaper than at home.
Also did another trip to Geneva but didnt buy too much this time, but I did get some really pretty tea light glasses. These were 11000RP each. I bought some new fancy thongs for 13200RP and 14850RP (one of my novo thongs was lost on the Tela Waja River during white water rafting).
Already booked for my next trip and hoping the recommendations from this forum for the Casa Padma pay off. My parents in law just returned from Bali and stayed at the Kuta Inna (where my aunty always stays) and they raved about it.