La Residencia Luzviminda Pensionne

“Residences” can hardly describe this hotel. The quality of the rooms, even by the standards of what you experience here in the Philippines, is abysmal. We arrived straight from the airport with four large suitcases and pet cat in tow. I booked this hotel because it was one of the few in Cebu that advertised allowing pets, and the location was agreeable to us. The lobby area is the main living area of the establishment - there is no front desk, no security personnel. The proprietor (a friendly, but sort of confused lady) lets you in at the gate. Upon arriving, the single female proprietor there helped us bring our bags up to our room (with great difficulty - they were big, heavy suitcases) via the one flight of stairs in the building. No elevators. No one else there to help. After depositing our bags, she let us be and went back to whatever she was doing - without giving us a room key. I went to go ask for the key to our room, and she looked surprised. She then spent twenty minutes rifling through every drawer of every desk in the main living space looking for our key. She finally came up with a ringful of them and told me she would have to try them all at our door to find out which one was ours. We were tired, and hungry, and wanted a shower badly, and so we didn't make much of a fuss about the key fiasco. Then, however, there was the room. The photos in any listing online looked nothing like the space we were given. There was one double size bed and two bunk-style twin beds in the room. They were metal framed, peeling and rusted, and the top rail of the “footboard” of the double bed was actually swinging freely loose. One of the post-top ornaments came off in my hand. The bathroom... Oh dear. To say that this room had any amenities - I had seen “rainfall shower head” and read that soaps would be provided - is just plain wrong. So wrong. Well, we had toilet paper. That was about it. The tile in the shower stall was grimy, and there was hair in the drain when we got there. The shower head itself was rusty and barely spat out a stream. There was no hot water. A dirty-looking bucket and old plastic scoop were also present for bathing, I assume. Towels were given to us, but only when I went to the lobby to ask for them. They were stiff and looked grimy. The toilet didn't flush. It was late at night, we were exhausted - driving around with four suitcases and a cat to look for another hotel just wasn’t an option. We showered (probably at risk of contracting tetanus) and lay down for the night. I woke up with about six mosquito bites, though we hadn't seen any in the room when we’d arrived. The next day we had errands in town, so we put some food out for the cat and headed out. We stayed out for most of the day and returned late that afternoon. The sight that greeted us turned our stomach. The bowl of dry kernels we’d put out that morning was positively teeming with ants. We went into recovery mode, stomping and flushing as many as we could. That's when I noticed that the twin bunk mattresses were covered in about 25 mosquitos. We packed in a hurry (myself receiving three more mosquito bites in the process), shook off as many ants as we could, and got the hell out of there. We'd stayed nearly 12hrs in total - that was about 12hrs too many. Do yourself a big, big favor - stay the hell away from this place.

the place is great! even though they have only few rooms, you get to have privacy and personal space. they have a kitchen area where you can cook your daily meals. it is also walking distance to a nearby mall and a convenience store open 24/7. security is not a problem because the place has a high-gated wall and there is a nearby "barangay hall" where they have nightly neighborhood watch around. i occupied an air-conditioned room and experienced no problems with electricity. the place also had a complimentary wifi internet access, with strong signal even to my room! the staff are very courteous, friendly, and accommodating. the best value for backpackers and transients because of their minimal charges and rates. will definitely stay again when i return to Cebu!