Hermes Palace by Bencoolen

The staff were polite, and both the spacious room with its large bed and the bathroom were clean. Breakfast was alright, with traditional dishes like lontong, local noodles, and batagor, plus modern desserts such as jelly, pastries, and brownies. I couldn’t find traditional cake for dessert, though, apart from sweet porridge. We stayed three nights. The hotel isn’t within walking distance of the historical place, but you can hire a car with a driver to get around. It costs about IDR 600K to IDR 800K per day, roughly 9am to 7pm. There were no security guards to help manage traffic in front of the lobby, so it looked crowded and messy when lots of cars and buses stopped nearby.

The sheets were dirty and stained when I checked in, and the toilet fittings looked like they needed replacing. When I called housekeeping to change the bedding, the guy who came acted like I was the one causing a problem.

The staff were good, but the rest really let the place down. My room smelled, the carpet was dirty, the corridors were smoky, and the bath towel had a weird synthetic, plastic-like smell. I’ve never come across anything like it, and wouldn’t call it a towel. The hotel is outside the city, and I was so disappointed with the room that I skipped breakfast. For the only high-end hotel in Banda Aceh, it didn’t meet the standard I expected.

The power went out in our room, and only after we called the front desk did they say they’d start the generator. It seemed odd that they waited for us to report the outage. Earlier, the sink had hot water, but by later in the day the shower was cold, and we were told it was being repaired. We paid USD 52 for two adults; adding a child raised it to $62, yet I still had to push to get a bed brought up for him. I’d been told this was the nicest hotel in the area, so the stay was quite disappointing. Maybe we’re spoiled by Western standards.