Hotel Grand Taufiq Tarakan

For 150k via RedDoorz App, I didn’t expect much, especially since it’s close to the main road and speedboat harbour. The hotel is old, and some features look it; the walls are quite moldy. Still, everything worked during my stay, including the lift, 14 inch TV, AC, shower, toilet seat, and bidet. They’re not great, but they do the job. It’s neither the cleanest nor the dirtiest.

The location is the only thing that might help you here: out of all the rooms we were moved through, only two seemed acceptable. Most were dirty, with stained sheets and grimy walls. One had a shower that kept running all day and night, leaving the bathroom hot, damp, and sticky. When we asked the front desk for help, they said to shut the bathroom door. Another room had a large hole in the ceiling and what looked like black mold everywhere. We also tried rooms with broken Wi-Fi and a nonworking A/C, then had to return to the first room with the shower that wouldn’t turn off. We stayed one night at first and had to unexpectedly book two more. The first room had dirty walls, an unclean bathroom, and stained sheets, though we’d expected that much from a cheap hotel. After we realized on checkout day that we needed one more night, we asked to stay. The woman at the front desk had already been rude, and said there were no rooms available. I believe that was a lie, since nobody else was staying at the hotel. It felt like she was unhappy about our complaints and didn’t want to deal with us anymore. I’ve travelled around SE Asia for 6 months, so I know standards here can be lower than I’m used to, but this place was really bad. Unclean rooms, rude staff, apparent black mold, bad Wi-Fi, and only two rooms that seemed fit to stay in.

The Wi-Fi connection was great, and it’s a good budget hotel near the airport.

It’s a cheap hotel and the room is okay, but the service is pretty bad.