Not the easiest place to get to but Irfan the owner arranged a car to collect us from the ferry terminal (1.5mil return). Great location a 10 minute boat ride from Ora and built on stilts over the water. There’s a reef right in front, but, apart from the first morning, the water was much too choppy to take advantage of it. Much of the time it was raining too. The rooms are basic. Cold water shower. Two plug sockets. But the deck is a wonderful, relaxing place to spend time on, and it was great for stargazing We stayed for 3 nights and arranged everything with Irfan via WhatsApp. He was very helpful and communicative at the arrangements stage but after we’d arrived communication was poor. By the end of our stay, most of my messages/questions went unanswered (I should point out I’m not in the habit of asking lots of questions and being demanding but it was basic stuff we needed dealing with). We learned from another guest that Irfan was in Jakarta. Next day we learned that he was back but we never actually saw him. Instead we were left in the hands of others and it felt like we were always left in the dark about things. My friend is Indonesian so there shouldn’t have been a problem. Shortly after we arrived, we arranged a boat/snorkel trip with Irfan’s brother for the following day, but after that it always felt like we were trying to coax information out of him rather than it being offered. (The boat trip was 900k and excellent. Irfan’s brother is lovely and we had a really great day). A few other things: - Food was 200k/day each for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. Fair enough. But we had a similar thing for lunch and dinner every time. Always the same fish, usually overcooked, and half the time devoid of veggies. Breakfast was literally fried rice or noodles with garlic and a fried egg. - We were promised snacks each afternoon, but only got something on the last day after asking several times. - We were never asked what time we wanted to eat or told what time to expect anything. It just appeared whenever. On our last day we’d eagerly eaten our first snacks, but then dinner arrived half an hour later. It was cold by the time we ate it - not great - and it was exactly the same as what we’d eaten for lunch. - I understand the location makes it a bit trickier, and it’s also Ramadan but half the time they didn’t really make any kind of effort. - The mains power would often go off and we’d usually have to wait for ages, sometimes hours, for someone to turn the generator on. We paid 100k/day extra for aircon (which we only wanted at night) but we had total blackout/no generator on the first night, generator only (so no aircon) on the second night, and blackout from 3.30am on the third night. - I messaged Irfan more than once to say we’d barely used the aircon so it was unfair to charge us. He didn’t charge for it when he messaged me with the final bill. But he still charged us for snacks we didn’t get, and he added a charge for
3 Reviews