Kumudara

Pluses: Excellent views over pagodas, beautiful sunrises and sunsets, good size room, not too far from the village/facilities. Nice food competitively priced if you decide to stay in for dinner. Quiet location, nice pool but sunbeds a bit tired. Helpful and friendly staff. Not so great: The hotel needs an update. Beds are creaky, settees need to be recovered. Bathroom gets totally flooded every time one is taking a shower. Little vases for shampoo are cute but really not practical, shampoo is slow to pour so water gets wasted once you are trying to shake stuff out. There was no tea in the room and coffee didn't get refilled - shame, really. Breakfast could be better, too. I haven't realised that we needed to pay cash which became a bit of a problem as they only accepted absolutely perfect USD notes - I mean no fold marks, no bent corners, not even the tiniest split anywhere, no pen marks, ideally newly printed. The kyat equivalent was not offered at competitive exchange rate. Wifi was slow if working at all.

We booked a one-bedroom apartment and it was a really good place to stay. Spacious, clean and appropriately decorated for the area, with floor to ceiling windows in both the living room and bedroom - with each over-looking a pond and the plains/temples beyond. There are decked seating areas outside each too, and the place is so quiet. Lovely of an evening as the sun sets. The staff are so lovely too - so friendly and helpful - and food is really good here - both breakfast and evening meals. We enjoyed them all. The hotel can also provide you with electric scooters for the day - for £4 each - and this is a wonderful way to get to the sunrise and hare around all the temples all day. We left at 5.30am each morning to visit different sites for sunrise and balloon watching, and then returned around 5pm after full dauys of exploring. A wonderful stay and highly recommend this place.

We paid a lot to have big room and had space, but the room and furniture was so old and had spots on the sofa that we did not want to sit. everywhere you looked It was very dark and was not like what is on the photos that you see. You can hear the people above you walking around at 5;30am. You could hear the Mini bar fridge going crazy all night long off and on when there was a big fridge in next room and no need to have this mini one. we also booked with Pagoda view, but there was NO pagoda view, only the tip of it in distance. We tried to change the room, but the lady at the reception only showed us a small and she kept saying that what we had was the best room which we did not realize there were better view room with the lights next building. This lady gave me a hard time over 1 $ bill that my 1 $ bill is not good when she told us to pay for the room in cash with US$. She did not even have any change in US$ and they do not accept any credit card!!!! She also forced us that she does not take US $ for the meal we had and E bike rental so we paid that with local currency. E bike is over charged almost double the amount in town, but not much choice since this place is not so close to New Bagan. The restaurant was not so good and most of things needed 1 hour preparation and breakfast was not good at all. It was school cafeteria quality. It was nice and quiet around and sun rise view spot was great to have just walking out with your pajama to see and not many people around, but really, the service was really bad and we paid way too much for this dirty room.