Reef Guest House

The location was the one good thing about this hostel, near cafés and small stores and a short walk from the main roads. We’d read the details on Google and Booking.com, so even though it was cheap, I expected better. There was no mention of shared bathrooms. We only found out after paying in full and asking. We arrived around 11am, earlier than expected, and knew early check-in depended on availability and the host being accommodating. Neither happened. We waited two and a half hours for the room, with no check-in, offer of anything, or even access to the television. The host walked past as if we weren’t there. Around 1:35pm he came back to the front desk and again didn’t greet us. There were no other guests. We had to guess whether to go ask about our room. When he finally gave my husband the key, he rattled off the instructions loudly, impatiently and in a hurry, then left us to find the room ourselves. The room only had a fan, even though the online listing showed air conditioning and said fans were in the bunk-bed room. The floor was dirty despite the beds being made. The foam mattress was thin, but at that price it was acceptable. They provided one towel and soap each. The bathroom was on the third floor, with one for men and one for women. It was clean when I went in, though the corners of the walls and floors were grimy. The shower barely had any water coming out, making it really hard to wash. My husband said the men’s bathroom had a large clear window with no curtain or other privacy. We never saw the kitchen open, and there was no breakfast. The host said they had stopped serving it because of the pandemic, as a precaution. That should have been in the listing so we’d know what to expect. We’d stayed at another cheap hostel before that was a lot better: air-conditioned, clean, with a private bathroom, and a friendly host who showed us to the room, accommodated our needs and let us check in early. They still served breakfast by the kitchen counter, with tables spaced apart and one tray of food per person. We think it was a poor excuse to stop offering breakfast, or they should at least have deducted its cost from the booking price. After that, we never saw the host at the front desk again, as if they didn’t care about the guests. The day before checkout, we saw him eating breakfast in the guest area and talking on his phone. We knew he couldn’t talk to us then, but he didn’t acknowledge us at all. My husband was polite enough to tap him on the shoulder as he passed, as a goodwill gesture. At checkout, a note said to leave the key on the desk. My husband rang the bell to make sure we’d handed it over and there was no confusion. The host came running back from what we guess was his house next door. We exchanged thank-yous, and that was it. The service was really poor, the listing left out important information, and everything else was a hassle. It felt like a rip-off.