Baan BM Hua Hin

For the price and location, this is excellent value. The hotel is a bit dated, but everything works. The room is big, with a safe, balcony, and bed, and the shower has good pressure and plenty of hot water. The rooftop pool was a bit of a letdown, though this isn’t a resort.

You get what you pay for here. It’s an old hotel showing its age, but it was only 600 baht a night. The bed was terrible, made of two single mattresses pushed together. The plumbing leaked, the shower head was very poor, and there were loose and broken tiles in the room. Cleaning was questionable: some days I got a full set of towels, other days I didn’t. Breakfast was okay. The full-size fridge was the best part. There’s no car parking. The booking lady was lovely, but reception staff spoke almost no English.

I specifically asked for a room with decent internet, but was seriously disappointed to find speeds of about 1 Mbps download and 0.7 Mbps upload. The repeaters in the hallway make it easy to see why. They’re placed as close as possible to a concrete hallway wall, with two concrete walls and a tiled bathroom between them and the seating area in the room. Someone clearly didn’t know what they were doing, costing guests a lot of productive time. This place is for tourists, not travelers who need a connection.

I keep coming back year after year, even though it’s an old hotel with wear all over and its own little charm. The location is very convenient, right in the city, and about a five-minute straight walk from the train station. That worked well when I arrived from Bangkok on afternoon Rapid 171. They have a breakfast buffet even in low season. At 637 baht for a room with buffet breakfast in low season, the price is hard to beat. Sure, breakfast isn’t like Hua Hin Hilton or Centara, but look at what you’re paying.