Sornwaree Apartment

Wouldn’t recommend it. The listing is misleading: the boiler doesn’t heat and the shower is usually dry. Reception was never staffed, and the lounge or common room was closed. There’s no balcony, and the view is straight into another room with no daylight. The “free water” is about one liter a day. Our door latch was broken. The internet may be fast on paper, but the signal was weak and pages took 30 seconds to load.

Jinny was a brilliant host. She drove us on a very reasonably priced tour to the bridge, then took us to the bus station and helped us buy tickets. The room was clean and very spacious, with a good shower and A/C, and breakfast was really tasty. A great little guesthouse in Kachanaburi.

On our last morning the host gave us a packed breakfast, including boiled eggs, which was a nice gesture. The room was spacious, cleaned every day, and came with two free bottles of water daily. We also got useful information about local places like Erawan Waterfall and The Bridge Over The River Kwai/Railway. Getting there from the tourist restaurants and bars was a hassle. There really weren’t restaurants or bars nearby, so I’d spend a bit more for somewhere central rather than pay for taxis. We had paid extra to have breakfast included, but the eggs came out like goo, however they were cooked, and weren’t a good start to the day. Our arrival was rough. We showed up early in the morning exhausted after a 10-hour overnight bus from Chiang Mai, and the host was quite rude. They didn’t ask who we were or whether we were checking in. Eventually we were asked if we wanted an early check-in, which meant paying an extra fee. Nobody had told us the check-in time, and we hadn’t run into that charge elsewhere in South East Asia. It felt like everything cost extra, including 10B for DIY coffee matte and 8B per item for laundry, despite there being no machine.

The new building could have been nice, but it needs cleaning and better upkeep. We stayed in a double room, and the whole place smelled. There was dust on the bed, spiderwebs everywhere, and dust blew out when we switched on the AC. The towels were the stinkiest.