Galeri Ciumbuleuit Hotel & Apartment is supposed to be a four-star hotel. But if I ever return to Bandung, I would not choose to stay here again.
My friend insisted on choosing this hotel because of Ohsofickle's review, but I mean, she was sponsored right, so obviously she has much more good things to say. It's not so much that the room wasn't nice, but that the other factors involved just made the whole stay at this hotel really...not so nice.
This is the lift lobby, there's 3 lifts in total but I think the one on the left is more of like a staff lift. If you want all 3 lifts to respond to you, you have to press the switch on both sides, which in my opinion is really lame.
The view from the room was nice enough. You can actually see the sun setting and we took like a lot of photos of it.
My first complaint: the breakfast is horrible.
The chicken was dry, the food was like very very Indonesian-ish so we didn't like it. And the choices were very limited.
So in the end we kept settling for egg and sausage, because face it, egg and sausages can't go wrong right. So we had that for breakfast straight for 3 days.
Okay, done with pictures, now on to the wordy post.
Like I mentioned in my other post
here, we got a deluxe twin room. The sink was located outside the toilet so it was really inconvenient. Imagine having to walk outside to wash your hand everytime after you do your business. And because the sink was located beside the door, they didn't have space for a full-length mirror, so you can't really check your attire before stepping out.
Also, there's some chanting from nearby the hotel, possibly from some temple blasting through speakers. I was so freaked out at first because it was so loud I thought it came from inside the room. And that was at an ungodly early hour. I didn't check the time but outside was pitch dark. And the walls are like paper thin. In the morning you can hear every movement outside your room. We had a horrible night of sleep because after the chanting/eerie music finally stopped, the kids (not sure which room) started running and shouting outside.
We wanted to get massage but Bandung being a city with no night life, all the shops (except the roadside stalls that looked damn dubious) were closed. I called up the hotel massage place to ask if they were still open, they told me no. K took over the phone, and they said yes!! And, they insisted on coming to the room. Damn suspicious right! It doesn't end here okay.
After we bathed we decided to walk around the hotel, so we went to check out the swimming pool, the massage place was located right beside it, and they said they were open (-.-) so we decided to give it a shot. And the whole time the fat girl was talking to K in this whiny voice that's like, you know, supposed to be attractive to guys. So they led us into the back where the "rooms" are, and they wanted to separate us, even though we just asked for a foot massage. Foot massage leh, just sit on the chair can already, don't need to go to different rooms right. You think you want to provide extra service I don't know ah. And the place had really horrible dim lighting and all, the chairs had mysterious stains on them and looked to be as old as me. So we just gave them some excuse and escaped.
On our second night there was no hot water when we wanted to bathe, so we complained. We were told somebody would come up and service the heater, but after 30 mins and nobody showed up, we called again. And guess what, they directed us to three different departments. We were so fed up we asked for the duty manager, and was told he went home. Great. So finally some in-charge showed up, and we were told there was a two-hour policy regarding hot water. Meaning we must give them a two-hour allowance.
Are. You. Kidding. Me?
Seriously? This is a four-star hotel leh, and we have to put up with no hot water and no venues for complaint and now we have to wait till 1am before we MIGHT be able to have hot water again.
That's not all okay. We asked for a morning call on the first day, they called us 20 minutes late. Yeah 20 minutes doesn't sound like a lot right, but imagine you have a whole day of activities pack, 20 minutes is enough to disrupt the whole schedule. And guess what, on the day that we were supposed to leave for the airport, we asked for a morning call at 8.30am. There was no call. At all. Nil.
Imagine if we missed our flight. Who will be responsible then?
Yeah I know. We could have set our alarms ourselves. But there's timing difference between Bandung and Singapore and hotels are supposed to get this right. This is a damn simple act leh. But at least the staff there were quite polite.
Bottom line: choose other hotels. Not like this is very near the shopping district anyway. Don't even get me started about the shopping because it sucks.
