Hotel Fomo 92 (Hotels in Cameroon)

Member Name: Ric!

Product:	Hotels in Cameroon
Date:	11/08/01 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clean, Friendly, Tastey food

Disadvantages: Basic

Hotel Fomo 92 is a moderately sized hotel in the North West Province of Cameroon. It is located near a town called Kumbo. You may, or may not, have heard of a football team called Kumbo Strikers who herald from the area. Anyway, Hotel Fomo 92 is the BEST hotel for miles around, and it is where visiting football teams stay before matches.

While I was in Cameroon working at a local hospital (see another of my opinions), I did not stay at Hotel Fomo 92, as I was residing in hospital accomodation. However, I spent a lot of time there in the evenings, and was given a guided tour of the bedrooms, so I feel able to give a good review of what it has to offer.

Firstly and foremost, the staff are wonderful. They will bend over backwards to please you. If they do not have something that you want, they will send someone into town to get it, despite your insistence that it is not necessary. They are courteous and good at their jobs.

The bar and restaurant were the places that I frequented most. Bottles of beer (600ml) cost around 60 pence, and there is a wide variety in stock. Do not expect the well known brands to taste like they do back in the UK. For example, they stock Amstel, however it is brewed in Cameroon and has a distinctly different taste from Amstel available here. Personally, I drank the local Cameroonian beer, and it was really good. Bar snacks like ground nuts (peanuts) and fried plantain chips are available.

The food on offer was exceptionally good. Be warned though, it is a good idea to order your food about 2 hours before you want to eat it! When you order chicken, if you listen carefully you can hear the squawking as it is slaughtered out the back. Then you have to allow time for plucking, etc. It really is fresh food, and would be enough to turn a lesser meat lover into a vegetarian. If you really want an English dish like chicken and chips, then that is available. There is, however, a wide range of tradit
ional West African and Cameroonian food available. The portions are huge, and the quality is fantastic - you will not mind the long wait once it arrives. A typical meal costs around £1.50

They don't really have much wine to accompany your meal. When I asked to see the wine selection I was taken inside to a high up shelf which contained three bottles. One was a cheap champagne-substitute, the other a bottle of Spanish red table wine, and the third escapes my memory. We plumpted for the red wine. It was a five year old bottle, and for £3 seemed like a good buy. However, it proved to be undrinkable. Perhaps the combination of a cheap quality wine, stored in the heat over 5 years had turned it into the port-like foulness that it was! We laughed it off and ordered some more beer!

There are small side rooms that you can occupy just off the bar, if you wish to drink in private with your friends, or maybe discuss business.

Also in the bar are 2 televisions. Huge satellite dishes on the roof of the hotel mean that you can get CNN if you so desire. The great thing is that you can also watch English Premierhip matches live on a Saturday!

The actual restuarant is downstairs from the main bar, however you can eat in the bar if you require. Rooms are located both upstairs and downstairs. They are basic, no luxuries, but most importantly they are CLEAN. This applies to the toilets as well. Rooms are not ensuite (as far as I can remember). No need for mosquito nets because the town is situated at 5000m above sea level and they do not bother you that high up.

Rooms cost £6 per night not including any food. It is a high quality hotel for the area. When you consider that the average Cameroonian in that part of the country earns 10p per hour, then you can see that at £1.50 for dinner, there are not many locals there. By comaprison, you can buy your dinner for 20p in a chop-house in town (taxi costs 10p) - just take your
own saucepan and they will fill it up for you.

Just leaving a £1 tip at the end of your meal results in enourmous shows of gratitude and they welcome you back with open arms everytime you return. The majority of white people they see there are Americans, so they don't often get tips (sorry if that seems unfair, but that is what I saw with my own eyes).

If you are ever in the area, I thoroughly recommend this hotel.

Summary: