Another awsome stay at this hotel I’ve been coming here for 12 years now and always have a nice time staff are friendly and helpfull the pool and beach ate very nice also very nice rooms with a variety of different style rooms all with very good aircon and very good wifi . The buffet breakfast is also good with a good variety and plenty of food this really is a nice hotel to stay highly recommended this place room c3 ady Paul
Location: Very good if you want to have a quiet time
Accommodation: Not bad, feels like grandmother's cottage.
Housekeeping: Cannot complain
Food: Hit and miss, can take time.
Beverages: Hit and miss can take time
Garden: Coul d be neater
Safety: We felt 100% safe here..
The staff at the resort were really friendly, especially the maids. The resort itself could do with more upkeep; the grounds are full of dead leaves and don’t seem well cared for. Mosquitoes are a big problem. Our cottage was fine and spacious, with a large bathroom. Getting service in the restaurant was difficult as there were many large groups of Thai people. I waited 40 mins for a glass of wine and almost an hour for 1 grilled fish. Breakfast is either Thai rice soup (which is good) or a very low quality American breakfast of overcooked eggs and hotdogs etc. The pool has chairs but without pads so they are uncomfortable. Overall, Ko Samet does not really have a good price Vs quality ratio, so this resort was acceptable for this island.
First, I chose Koh Samet because I asked a local Thailand friend which island has not been overdeveloped since my early days coming to Thailand in the 1990s. His response was "head to Koh Samet". I looked for a value hotel on one of the more southern, less developed beaches which led me to Wong Duean Bay and the Vongdeuan Resort.
The pool was a big draw. With the low tide being pretty extreme, it is really nice to have the salt water pool to cool off in and swim laps. The food seemed pretty authentic to me. With mainly Thai visitors coming in on the weekends it figures the food would be good at the Vongdeuan Resort. :) The staff were wonderful and always so fun to share a story or two with.
The beach area all along the bay was extremely clean with no plastic on the beach or garbage in the water. This is a big plus when going to the shore in SE Asian countries. There are several beach restaurants but none of them had loud music, at least during the weekdays when I was there. It is definitely a sleepy and peaceful place to enjoy the water at high tide as well as the white sand beach for walks.
Great location, Vongdeuan is a very beautiful beach, the resort and the beach have a lot of shaded areas, clean water, all perfect. The restaurant has a good choice of food, and is very reasonably priced. That for the positives.
The "resort" itself is very neglected, dead leaves from the trees everywhere, no pool service etc. The staff was friendly but maybe they were reduced to minimum numbers due to Covid and could not cope with the many bookings over Christmas. If you need a drink, food or a towel you need to ask at reception or the restaurant. There is nobody at the beach or pool area, pool was also not cleaned during the day and was full of leaves from the many trees. There was not a single soft cover on any of the sunbeds at the beach or pool area, so in the early morning all guests started a hunt for the chair and bench covers in the restaurant area, to build themselves some kind of upholstery on the sunbeds.
The room - we "upgraded" from a normal cottage which was in a totally dead area in the back of the resort to a Pool cottage (another THB 400 extra per night) but the state of the room was awful. Every single power plug totally loose, any plug no matter if European or Thai plug or adapters fell out. The bedside lamps broken, all seemed to be at least 20 years old (the TV was ok and seemed to be replaced some 5-10 years ago if that’s of interest). No storage space for clothes but a tiny 50 cm wide hanger space with 4 plastic hangers over the fridge- luckily we had a 3rd bed we could use to unpack our stuff. The bathroom is large, but very dark and gloomy because of the tons of leaves on top of the "glass roof". And it had the strongest sewage smell which made your stomach turn every time you needed to brush teeth or take a shower (with very low water pressure, but ok we are on a small island and it is maybe not possible to have better water pressure).
Now the bed -- it was one of the most uncomfortable and hard beds in all our extensive travels. We have stayed in hundreds of hotels and resorts, and we do not need luxury, but this makes it easily in the top 10 of the worst beds and nights we had, if not the top 3. you could not even sit on the bed to read, after 10 min your bum hurts so much that you need to get up. We kept turning all night, everything hurt, we tried to make it softer with cushions etc. but no result - we seriously thought about leaving and to cancel our Christmas break - even though we had to prepay during the booking, and would have lost all our money. We rather wanted to be back home to get some sleep. We spoke to staff who were again really kind and promised to put a soft mattress on top, which turned out to be a 1 cm cotton cover - three of them and they really tried their best but it did not make any difference. The owner must completely refuse to invest anything, I am sure we are not the first guests to complain and nothing is done about it.
Lastly the breakfast was a standard and minimum choice of 2 versions, western (eggs / sausages) or Thai. You get the minimum amount every day the same, with one (!!) slice of toast cut in half.
The staff was really friendly so we do not want to make life more difficult for them, but the so called "resort" is run by the owner on shoestring budget, with no maintenance or investment, while charging top prices with over THB 3,000 per night.
We travelled a lot all over Thailand and this is one of the worst value for money places we experienced. We had much better, cleaner, more comfortable rooms for 800-100 THB per night.
Definitely not recommended, while the location is beautiful.
