Disaster

    Doreen’s been doing most/all of our trip planning through the Web for the past few years. She spends a lot of her computer time surfing travel web sites and monitoring travel boards (when she’s not playing Free Cell or, lately, Bejewelled). Though she grumbles a lot and mutters to herself, things generally work out and we’ve had some wonderful trips without many glitches. Sometimes we get lucky and good turns into great like our time at Octopus Resort in Fiji which still ranks as one of our best weeks.
    Sometimes things don’t work exactly as planned and the experience is somewhat less than we’d hoped for such as at Kuberka Gita on Ils des Pins in New Caledonia. At rare times it’s an outright disaster like Nananu Island Lodge, also in Fiji, where we bailed after just one night. Now, it looks like we’re into a repeat of that experience.
    The flight into Banda Aceh and the ride to the ferry went well but we had to wait three hours for the fast ferry. We rode inside for the one hour trip to Pulah Weh, listening to the noisy air conditioner. Our first inclination of a problem was the car provided by the hotel for our transit. To call it an old beater would be a compliment. We shared the ride with two other passengers going to their homes. The driver used their fares to get gas so he could make the trip.
    The hotel is well outside the city. Doreen chose Rasa Seni because it has a/c and is close to some good snorkel areas. It’s a lovely spot with a small, palm-fringed black-sand beach and about a dozen cabins. The guy behind the desk gave Doreen a form to fill in but couldn’t explain how it should be completed. Instead, he showed her a form filled in by a previous guest and told her to follow that. We checked in (at least I think we did) and were shown to our room. The two guys who helped spoke very little English so we weren’t sure what was going on. Doreen asked about the lady who’d handled our bookings and was told that she was no longer with the hotel. In fact, she was no longer even on the island, having moved to Bali since our last contact in mid-April.
    As we began to unpack, problems started to surface. One would think that a hotel would have prepped a room for an arriving guest but not here. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom and, when we asked for some, we had a hard time getting the message across. When we went to transfer our clothes from the suitcases we found the shelves needed to be wiped down because they were not clean. The place looked like maintenance had become a distant memory.
    I decided to boil some water and have a cup of tea (coffee for Doreen). I don’t know what they have for electricity but I’ve never seen a kettle take so long to come to a boil. No TV. No Internet connection. No other guests.
    Dinner is served at 7. No menu. No choices. What you get is what you get. The first thing we get is a home-made vegetable soup. It’s quite tasty but who wants hot soup when the temperature is in the mid-80's. There’s also a glass of water on the table and the water glass is almost as hot as the soup bowl. We have difficulty getting across the point that we like to drink cold or, at least, cool water. Finally, the hot water is replaced with a glass of tepid.
    The entree is a barbequed chicken leg with white rice and some veggies. The only utensils are a fork and spoon. It’s difficult to eat a chicken leg without a knife and not get your fingers greasy. Then we notice that there are no serviettes on the table. We have another hassle trying to get across the point that we need something to wipe the grease from our fingers. What we finally end up with is a plate full of what look like opened packages of small tissues. This isn’t going to work if we can’t communicate with the management. They don’t seem to have a clue about how to run a resort and Doreen doesn’t think she has the energy or patience to teach them.
    We’ve decided that we’re leaving in the morning. We’ll take a taxi back into Sabang and check out the tourist bureau for some alternative. When we bailed on Nananu Island we ended up at Raffles Hotel near the Nandi airport and discovered the wonderful snorkeling at Mana Island. Maybe we’ll be just as lucky this time. At any rate, we’ve decided we can’t spend four days here.