Hotel 81 Cosy

We arrived around 5 PM, two hours after the 3 PM check-in time, but our room still wasn’t ready. They asked us to wait 30 minutes and said a guest had just checked out and left the room very dirty, so they needed longer to clean it. Since checkout is at 11 AM, I wondered how the guest could have checked out so late. I later found out that they also rent rooms by the hour. That’s the only possible explanation I can think of. Maybe they’d given our room to hourly guests because we arrived late, which would be super unethical if true. There were three of us, and we’d booked one room each, although only two of us had arrived. After a while they said one room was ready. We were shocked by where our rooms were, just look at the video. They were rooms 107 and 108, tucked into a corner on the first floor. To get to them, we had to pass the staff toilet and break room. Neither room had a window, and room 108 was oddly spacious. It was nearly Chinese New Year, when hotel prices had spiked, and this is what we got. It’s hard to believe we’d stayed somewhere much better for the same price, around SGD 100 per night. To be fair, the place was quite clean, and maybe we were just unlucky to get these rooms. They should at least have given us a discount for the room quality. The location and exterior were probably the only good things.

We were glad to get in early, and the air conditioner helped with the odd smell in the room and foyer. But the bathroom was filthy, and the bed felt like a slab of rock. I even thought about sleeping in the bath, though it was too dirty for that. The shower had no curtain or door, so water went everywhere, and there was barely any hot water, maybe two minutes. We had to ask for soap and toilet paper. The room was serviced twice during our stay, so the dirt didn’t seem like a first-day oversight. There were no windows either, just boarded-up ones that wouldn’t open. The staff were sort of friendly. We nearly moved hotels the first night, but it was Grand Prix weekend and anything else available in town cost a fortune. We stuck it out and were relieved when checkout finally came.

A dive, but there were very few choices for F1 weekend, so I stayed. The room was cramped, poorly maintained, and smelled damp. The bed cover was disgusting, with several stains, including one that looked like blood. I paid S$260 a night for it.

Mr. Tony was the best part of staying at this place in Chinatown, SG. He took great care of us. A good spot to stay.