Michael Zhen

Review of independence Hotel & Spa Sihan...

I would had said my stay here, and Sihanoukville i...

I would had said my stay here, and Sihanoukville itself; was the worst place travelled overseas so far and I just don't understand the hype of this island. Now lets get back to this hotel itself.

Communications is not really good. Help desk receptionist speaks English as if he was on autopilot - you still don't really understand his explanation on things, and to make matter worse they just do not care about your planning. One of the really moment that pisses us off was missed their free shuttle bus service to town as we came way earlier to wait for the bus; to the point we even requested them to tell us when the bus arrived but to our disappointment they wouldn't even bother to inform or even hold the bus a little as we went off to see other places after getting bored of waiting. Talking about plan spoiler :(

The room itself although is creative, it isn't clean enough to give you a peace of mind. Due to its location on ground at the center of the man-made forest, flies and lizards seem to be permanent residents of these rooms instead of human beings. And for the first stay day, as nice as our room's toilet looks... The floors tiles were laid to fall opposite the floor trap direction, causing the bath and dry toilet to flood up! That made my wife's mood goes down and we requested for a room change which they seem very reluctant at first and they even send a cleaner to wipe the floor clean!

IMO, all these and the hotel is priced at $100 a night is absolutely throat cutting, and you paid in US Dollars! For food, services, whatever. Other developing countries countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam do NOT make you pay with for their goods in USD unless the money was reconverted back to its original currency. Now, on the way in and out from the hotel you will notice huge scale developments by the Chinese (China), all wanting a piece of the US Dollars. Outside sceneries isn't that impressive - all look run down and roads are mostly dusty due to construction works of the mega city.

In future, most likely this place would emulate Macao, but with the Chinese ruling over them with jobs opportunities like gambing (with casinos all over thr place) and prostitutions. An island that will be populated with the greedy Chinese because their ruler was stupid enough to sell their land to China over some dough.

Of course this place have their pros but I found out that the cons outweighs the pros by far hence this place only achieve 1/5 stars. What really astounds me would be the online reviews from the so called whites giving fantastic reviews claiming all Cambodia is the best olace to visit in the world - when nearly all SEA countries could offer much more without puncturing your pockets. Even after converting the expenses using USD to when we travelled at Japan, we realized Japan is still a cheaper and better country to travel to cost wise!

Such experience surely will put Cambodia out of all my travel list as there are much more countries that will offer much more with much less.