Golden Monkey Guesthouse — Hotel in Kisoro

The staff at Golden Monkey are great - warm, smiling, and ready to help in whatever way you need. Aaaand that's where the greatness ends. The shower has cold water only (even when you turn on the "hot" water, it's still cold; there was an actual flush toilet, though, so that's a bonus), the vinyl flooring is peeling off and there are marks all over the dorm walls, the electricity goes out or is turned off so often that I always had to fumble around in the darkness at night and first thing in the morning when I woke up could never charge my phone - not that that matters, because there's no WiFi. Not as in, "Our WiFi isn't working tonight, but we'll get it fixed tomorrow," but as in, "Our WiFi just isn't going to work at all during your time here" (what I was actually told). There are cleaner places with electricity in town where you can stay; a place on the main road called Mucha seems really nice and has the same prices. If you do stay here, don't order food from the restaurant - you'll be waiting a loooong time to get it, as other posters have said. The restaurant looks really nice, but I ordered instant coffee the night before - which only literally requires boiling water - and got it twenty minutes late. Again - nice staff, but a lot can be done to make this a more traveler-friendly...

The place is located in the centre of town, walkable distance to supermarket, nice cafe & restaurant, etc. they offer great experience such as coffee tour & village walk (the tour guide Abel is knowledgeable and amazing!!) However, the rooms are terrible, some toilets have no water for shower and flushing toilet. They tried to fix the water situation multiple times, but still didnt work. The bunk beds are very old and uncomfortable. The dorm room that I stayed in barely fits 4 people and we have 0 room to even leave a day pack. The WiFi is not working at all and they claimed that the WiFi is down for the entire neighbour while that wasn’t the case. They ended up “fixing” the WiFi in 30mins after multiple requests simply by topping up their data plan… They offered laundry service (washing and drying) which the laundry of our group was all messed up - some laundry were missing or mixed up, and most of the laundry were still soaking wet … we tried to talked to the manager, but apparently they apologised and claimed that it’s not their fault and even said they don’t understand our definition of dryness … although the boss agreed to meet and sort out the situation with us, but he/she never showed up....

OK, well this is Africa so don't expect western type standards and this is really a backpackers type guest house. The rooms are small but ours had a double bed with mosquito net and a shower room. There are hooks to hang your clothes but no wardrobe or cupboard. Just a single plastic chair. The shower room had hot water but we did not seem to be able to get it to work, but the cold shower was quite refreshing! The toilet had a suspect flush that occasionally worked. The bed clothes were clean but the room felt grubby. Food is inexpensive and tasty - cooked on a charcoal grill so you need to order it well in advanced if you want it at a special time. Wifi is free and good. The best part of our stay was the ever smiling, friendly and helpful staff who welcomed us back each day with a hug and genuine pleasure. They provided packed lunch and even breakfast at 5am when we went for an early morning gorilla trek. Drinks - you helped your self from the fridge (not always working) on an honesty basis. Avery homely and friendly place that we...