Have you ever felt the paradise? (Mermaid Hotel (Trang, Thailand))

Member Name: alphason

Product:	Mermaid Hotel (Trang, Thailand)
Date:	21/06/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convenient to bus station

Disadvantages: Old and run down

This review is of The Mermaid Hotel which is in Trang, Southern Thailand. As a tourist destination in its own right Trang really does not have a lot to offer, it's a fairly typical busy Southern Thai town. You may though end up here if you are travelling from Malaysia into Thailand; 2 hours further North West that Hat Yai so a bit closer towards your probable destination in Krabi (2.5 hours) or Phuket (6 hours), or a visit to some of the East coast islands in the province.

After staying in the hotel I looked it up on the Internet later, here it is called "Mermaid Hotel & resort" with the byline "Have you ever felt the paradise?" I must say this claimed is somewhat inflated to say the least.

There is a choice of two room categories, fan for 350 Baht (about £6.00) or air conditioned rooms for 400 Baht (about £7.00) looking at both rooms this seemed to be the only difference.

The location of the hotel is very convenient and really was the reason we stayed there in the first place, just a 2 minute easy walk from Trang bus station. As I said there really is not a great amount of things to do here, there are places to eat and explore nearby but it's inexpensive to take a motorbike taxi or three wheeled tuk-tuk if you want to venture into the town centre for a wider choice.

The sign for the hotel is visible at the end of the street if you immediately turn right when exiting the bus station. Upon entering the gates you can immediately see that this place is in need of a bit of a spruce up. There is a graveled car park with a fair amount of greenery forcing its way through, to the right you will see a two storey building, ahead is a bungalow which is the reception and to your left an outdoor swimming pool.

You can't help but have your eyes drawn to the pool, but unfortunately it does not induce any desire to swim. I must say I have never seen such a sorry sight, the picture on the website shows a nice clean area with inviting water, in reality the area is run down and the pool is filled with very dark green water, nobody has swum in there for a long time.

The staff at the hotel were as efficient as you could expect and were perfectly happy to show us both room choices before we decided to check in.
As the price difference was so small we opted to stay in an air conditioned room for the extra £1.

Rooms are located in the two storey building; those on the ground floor have their doors opening directly to the outside like a Motel. Our room was on the First floor, the staircase and corridor are tiled and are open air and like the car park could have benefitted from a bit of weeding as greenery was growing through the stairs and corridor in places where water was gathered.

Inside the room is quite large. Unusually for a tropical climate the floor is carpeted, a burgundy colour and like everything else has certainly seen better days, I am not sure why the carpet is left there I think it would have looked much better with just the tiled floor.

The room has two single beds, quite old and not the most comfortable of mattresses, the bedding was clean but again old and shabby. The only other furniture were two plastic white chairs and a small table, like the kind of thing you would have in your garden. A small TV is provided but only had local channels so nothing for non Thai speakers. The most modern thing about the room was the air conditioning; it looked nearly new and worked very well, not at all in keeping with the rest of the property.

In the ensuite bathroom is a tiled floor, the ceiling consisted of sagging ceiling tiles that were in places broken. WC and wash hand basin were fine, on the end wall a bath with shower above. I was not really sure what the purpose of the bath was as there were no taps to fill it up, instead the shower head was the only water source. Taking a shower was fairly difficult for me as the shower hose was very short and was way off reaching my head if I was stand up, so showering was a crouching affair. All cold water also but you get used to that.

Overall it was the convenient location that made us stay there the night, if you're visiting for longer than a day then I would suggest looking elsewhere but for an early morning onward bus journey it did the job. The price is good but not excellent, really a good clean up and a little modernisation and the place would be miles better.

Address: 296/25 Plernpitak soi 1, Huay-yod Road, Trang, Thailand
Telephone: +66 (0)75 211927
Pictures: www.geocities.com/mermaidhotel/mermaid.jpg

Summary: Ok for a night