Villa Baan Malinee

For those of you who seek original boutique accommodation on your travels in Thailand, the Villa Baan Malinee is a wonderful find! All the usual accolades so often freely given such as ‘Little Gem’, ‘Oasis’, ‘Paradise on earth’ etc., etc., are really SO TRUE AND APPROPRIATE . The Villa Baan Malinee is such a beautiful place, set in a lovely, peaceful location and the iconic Balinese style building is truly enchanting surrounded by cascading multi coloured bougainvillea and other wonderful plants within a well kept garden. Four…yes, just four wonderful ground floor apartments surround a lovely central swimming pool, so private…so exclusive! The owner and host extraordinary, ‘Marleen’ made us so welcome, relaxed and happy here; I cannot speak highly enough of her, she is such a lovely, caring lady with a wonderful eye for detail. A 5* Holiday Villa for sure with a beautiful 10*host. We already look forward to a return visit soon. Thank you Marleen, you have made our stay truly memorable.

It could have been a nice experience if it were not overwhelmed by an excessive cost cutting atmosphere reigning this B&B. It positions itself as a "5 star bed and breakfast", but instead you are left with the feeling that you would do better by not coming at all. When we arrived our shower was not working, so we were allowed to take a shower in the other room, and the plumber supposedly called. No welcome drinks or any other kind of welcome effort whatsoever... When we came back to the room in the evening the shower was still not functioning properly, though the host insisted that it was fixed. The water pressure increased indeed after about 20 minutes experimenting with the boiler, but stayed capricious at best throughout our stay. The breakfast was correct, but I still couldn't get rid of this feeling of economy in everything (3 dime size pieces of salami for 2). When I made a casual remark that the pool needs cleaning (which it clearly did), it was met with a comment that I don't have a pool at home, and I don't know what it takes to take care of it. I must say though that a cleaner came the next day and the quality of water improved a bit, still we didn't venture getting into it. I would have probably not written this review at all, but the last drop was charging 2 x 100baht for 2 tooth brushes when we checked out. I don't care about 100 baht, but for a hotel positioning itself as luxury, doing this WITHOUT EVEN telling us this in advance, was nonsense. To compare, rental of a motorbike for a whole day is only 250 baht. Oh, and God forbid you asking to have your clothes washed. They probably save on the washing powder too. Ours got out smelly as if not washed at all :(