Red Monkey Beach Lodge

The staff were very sweet and handled the problems well. They even offered us breakfast for free as an apology, which we appreciated. There was an already-opened water bottle that was half full in the room, and on the first night the shower pressure was almost nonexistent. It worked fine the next day.

The view of the beach was lovely, but in my opinion the stay wasn’t worth what we paid. The pictures give a misleading impression. I’d specifically said it was our honeymoon, but the bed didn’t have the nice flower petals shown in the photos. There’s no TV in the room, which I partly understood as a way to encourage people to go out, but taxis were so ridiculously expensive that on the days we wanted to stay in, there wasn’t much to do. We also had no WiFi for two days and had to go to another hotel to make our stay worthwhile. When we left, I told management that my husband’s Fitbit watch, a wedding present from me, had gone missing from our room. We never took it with us on outings, and it was always left charging beside the bed. The room had been cleaned twice. It seems exceptionally strange that you have to leave your key at reception to get the room cleaned because they don’t have spare keys. Management showed no compassion and took days to reply. The hotel is far from anything to do, and our bed sheets were damaged and in poor condition. I wouldn’t recommend it.

I’d recommend avoiding this hotel. They have a disco that goes on until 3 in the morning, with deafening music heard all through Jambiani. If you’re looking for a peaceful holiday, I’d look for a different beach and avoid Jambiani.

We planned and paid to stay four days, but checked out after one. The location is great, though there are plenty of other places with a good view. When we arrived, neither the safe nor our room door could be locked. After we asked to change rooms, we found that the sheets hadn’t been cleaned, with makeup marks and stains we couldn’t identify. We asked staff to replace them, only to discover the room hadn’t been cleaned at all, with dead cockroaches inside. We also couldn’t sleep at night because staff, not guests, were making quite a lot of noise around the rooms. I wouldn’t recommend staying there.