Grand Hill Hotel — Hotel in Hpa-An District

There are 5 villas each with 4 rooms. Rooms 101 (the one we were in) and 102, in the villa furtherest from reception, both face onto the large car park and get the noise from people chatting as they arrive and leave but worse, if the windows are open, fumes come into to the room from engines left to idle, which happened to us. ||||Room clean but basic, with a kettle and coffee with sugar with dried milk sachets but no teabags. (We brought 200ml boxes of skim milk from Australia, enough for one each day while in Myanmar). ||||The aircon was noisy and there was no ceiling fan, typical of Myanmar hotel rooms. Wifi works in room a lot of the time but slow at peak times||||The beds were hard but comfortable. We centred the queen bed in the room, giving some space to walk along as the bed was against the wall when we arrived. ||||We couldn't see any restaurants in surrounding area so we did eat inhouse- acceptable food but not a patch on local restaurants serving local cuisine introduced to us by our guide at lunch time. The restaurant suffers a bit in atmosphere and is low on charm with two large sponsored fridges on one side of the room. There are 4 aircons, one in each corner.||||First day breakfast was quite spartan -noodle dish, vegetables, rice dish (we had eggs which were tepid as it seems all hot dishes are cooked ahead and there is no way to keep heated), and crisps; one fruit (pineapple), white bread with margarine and red jam. On second day as there was a big group also staying- so two types of fresh fruit bananas and pineapple, 3 kinds of cold drinks. When there were only two slices of white bread left, on asking, the waiter took bread from the packet in the fridge.||||With regard to customer service, while there are plenty of staff, no one had explained how to get a beer - as in the restaurant when asking for a beer, the answer was "help yourself"! ||Then we had to ask Can we have 2 glasses please? And can you open the...

I stayed here for 3 nights this month, having had this hotel booked for me. It is a bit of a strange place, with rooms above the main building and then bungalows consisting of two rooms each. I was put in room 101 (!), which was right at the end away from the main building. Unfortunately this faced the car park and was quite noisy, as people arrived late and left early. The main room was acceptable, with a big comfortable bed, a wardrobe (which stank of moth balls) and some chairs and a table squeezed in. The bathroom on the other hand was not. The walls were filthy - there was a hatch in the roof through which someone had obviously been recently, as the ceiling and adjacent wall were covered in dirty foot and hand prints. There were also splodges of other things, which didn't bear thinking about. There was an extractor fan, but this had been set into the window and there was a large gap round it, through which insects came into the room. To be honest I felt cleaner going into the bathroom than coming out of it. I had breakfast there each day: toast and jam with tea. There was a bigger selection but I can't eat noodles etc first thing. The staff were generally friendly, although there was a receptionist who just stared and stared, which was a bit odd! I did sleep well, partly because of the blackout curtains and my earplugs. I would have given this a 2, but the staff and the bed saved it. I wouldn't choose to stay here...

This is a very typical Myanmar style hotel that is generally what you find anywhere in Myanmar that doesn't see large numbers of foreign tourists. You should expect staff with limited English who may take 20 minutes to find your booking and check you in, expect mismatched furniture, inexplicably placed light switches and garish blankets. As long as your expectations are at the right level, you will find this a reasonable, simple place to stay. Electricity supply was good and the beds were actually very comfortable. The rooms were on the small-ish side but clean. The breakfast had a little bit more variety than many typical Myanmar hotel breakfasts, which was nice. I chose to stay here rather than Zwekabin, because although Zwekabin definitely looks more upmarket (I haven't stayed there, so can't fully compare), several of my friends were not happy staying there so I thought I'd take a punt and try somewhere different. It is also closer to the centre of Hpa An than Zwekabin, although it is still quite some distance from the centre of things. If you have modest expectations, I think this is a reasonable place to...