Comparison between Club Med Bali, Bintan Island and Cherating ...(Part II)

Rooms

Continuing with the comparisons between the three Club Med in Bali, Bintan Island and Cherating that we have the privilege to visit, I would like to share about the quality of rooms of these three resorts.

Now to start with, Club Med’s holiday is NEVER about staying in the comfort of your room the whole day, munching away peanuts, drinking beer and watching TV. Club Med is about participating in the various activities that the club organized the entire day. It’s about having fun. It’s about being outdoors. Hence, a word of caution is that you do not expect the rooms to be of any of the 5 star hotel rooms or resorts and spas are offering despite the 5 star prices you pay.

They are basic and to serve one purpose only, which is to sleep after a hard day of playing and partying …(with the exception of young couples or ‘honey mooners’ of course). However, after having said that, there are certain category of rooms which we found wanting in comfort and style.

To start with, the rooms we took in Club Med Bali were fairly decent, clean and comfortable, although they are a little small. The furnishings although still basic were decent. We ranked them second in our list of overall room cleanliness and comfort.

Club Med Cherating’s rooms on the other hand were fairly poor. However, we have been forewarned. This is largely due to the fact that Club Med Cherating is oldest Club Med in this region. We were however, informed that some rooms have been refurbished. We checked in taking the basic room and since we went with our eldest son who came back from Christchurch for his holidays, we took two rooms, one with a standard King and another with a double twin.

The basic rooms are definitely old and the furnishing and wall colour reflects their age. Not only were they old, they are small as well. We were just not comfortable with them and we insisted to change our room and took an upgrade to the deluxe room the following night. Fortunately, there were available units.

The deluxe rooms were definitely much larger and with better furnishing. Although they claimed that these rooms have been refurbished, we only find them satisfactory.

When we visit Bintan Island, after gotten wiser from our experience from Cherating, we booked the deluxe room straight away. We must say that Club Med Bintan definitely looks newer and the rooms look more comfortable, larger and more decent. Of the three, we ranked the rooms in Bintan Island the best overall. However, we could not comment on the basic normal rooms as we have no guts to try them after our experience in Cherating.

Therefore, if you are planning for a trip to Club Med, it would be advisable to check with the sales staff and you might just want to pay a little extra for that larger deluxe room ...

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