Baan Talay See Cream Resort

Time for a weekend away exploring from Bangkok, car loaded up with no where to stay. After exploring around Ratchaburi area we used Trip Advisor to find a bed for the night. This hotel appeared. Located in a great place, local markets across the road and soem great seafood restaurants near the hotel. Staff are friendly and the room was clean. Only negative comment were the beds were quite hard, not alot of softness or comfort on them. Still I managed to have a good sleep. Breakfast was very Thai local, something foreigners need to experience and enjoy. Ate far too many of the Thai sweets for breakfast! Will be back to explore again.

OK, the first thing to note is that this seems to be the only accommodation in this location. Immediately surrounding it are restaurants, markets and a temple. Each of these is worthy of note: The temple is nothing to get excited about. Just like a thousand others you have seen, and its surrounds are shabby and not such a nice smell due to the dirty market stalls. They have this strange metal cylinder (quite large) that they let explosives off in just about all day. I don't understand it and it does disturb your peace. There are market stalls all along the road but pretty much all of them are selling seafood to take home or seafood to eat. Not much else. Once you've taken a 10 minute stroll, you've pretty much had your market experience. There are also restaurants all along the seafront, with people outside trying to convince you to step into theirs. The remarkable thing about these is that by 8:30pm (on a Saturday night!!) they are all closed as we discovered when we took a walk to find somewhere to eat. If you want anything at night you need to take motorised transport to nearby townships. Finding that there are no restaurants available at night meant we headed back to the resort to order room service only to find that it too closes at 8pm. Not exactly a customer friendly situation. We were only staying one night and when we got there we were taken to a room that was quite big and had a nice big bed and bathroom. But the fake wooden floor was all lifting up at the entry, and the view was of the carpark where there was all building works going on. When we asked if we could move to another room, we were informed that if we wanted that we would have to pay the same again as the booking had already cost (which was THB3,200 for the two of us). After some negotiations we were eventually moved to a smaller room at no extra cost, which had a water view, which we were happy with. The tariff did include breakfast vouchers and we were quite happy with the breakfast. The new pool was nice and not used very much by the other guests so no problem with doing laps :) In the evening and early morning the mosquitos are quite a problem at the resort as they have a lot of water features which unfortunately contain a lot of still water. We went there by invitation but I cannot think of a good reason to go back. There's not much that's attractive about the area and the price is a little high considering that. The staff were quite friendly and polite so nothing here is to reflect badly on them. Finally, there are no tea of coffee making facilities in the room so I couldn't have my early morning cuppa on the balcony. Sorry, but I am English!