This was the hotel I was most...
This was the hotel I was most looking forward to staying in during our 4 week trip through Vietnam. It was also the most expensive as we had booked a beach front bungalow at £88 per night for 5 nights. The hotel grounds are beautiful and the gardens are meticulously maintained by an army of gardeners who at times seem to outnumber guests! The staff are friendly and helpful and most of them speak English. The beach is very good too, and also maintained by hotel staff every day.
The room however was considerably smaller than I had expected, given that it was one of the hotel's most expensive. You couldn't actually see the beach from the patio of the room because of an upward slope and a chest high hedge. The beach front bungalows could do with being elevated so that you can actually see the beach.
On our arrival, my 12 year old daughter was taking a shower and accidentally knocked a tiny hotel shampoo pottery bottle off a very small, irregular stone shelf (where it had been left by cleaning staff) which fell onto other stones in the bathroom and broke. The next morning we were presented with a bill for $1.50. Not a lot of money, but not a very diplomatic move by the hotel in terms of good customer relations, particularly for guests staying in a $175 a night room!
Worse was to come. On our second evening I recieved a very wide and deep cut to my leg from a small table on the patio which had a broken glass top. This wound bled profusely and took a long time to heal. It effectively meant that I could not use either of the two hotel pools for the rest of my stay as I had an open wound, and also had to be careful on the beach to avoid getting sand into it. I complained to hotel staff who were extremely apologetic and replaced the broken table but other than that did nothing. I had to write a formal letter of complaint in order to speak to a more senior member of the hotel staff, who at my own insistance called for a doctor at the hotel's expense. At no point was I offered any compensation in terms of a partial refund or even a voucher for a meal in the hotel restaurant. I made the point in my letter to the hotel that injuries like this, caused by broken furniture, simply should not happen in $175 per night hotel rooms.