Five Star...Five Schmar

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Tina Writes

Once again I am writing this blog because Rob is once again threading the eye of the needle with perfection. We are home now. 24 hours after getting home and Rob has developed yet more food poisoning. It has to be delayed from Mexico cause the chances it was from our local Thai restaurant is too much of a coincidence, plus we had the same thing from the Thai place and so far, I am fine. So he must have gotten it from something he ate at the Platinum Yucantan Princess 5 star hotel.

So yes. It was time to drive to our 5 star, adults only resort in Playa del Carmen. I had been looking forward to this for literally years. For the past 4 or so years I have considered Mexico as our holiday for that year. I have researched the different areas of the Riviera Maya and the different hotels over the years. I had thought that a 2 week holiday in a 5 star resort with prisitne white beaches, all inclusive food and drinks but on the doorstep of Mayan ruins was right up our street. Best of both worlds was my thoughts. So I worked in 5 days of exactly that onto the end of this trip, kinda like a holiday within the holiday. A relaxing time at end of what was quite a hectic itinerary. We decided to keep the hire car for this time just in case we got bored and wanted to go somewhere else, plus it made for getting to the airport much easier and cheaper than a transfer.

The drive to Playa del Carmen was easy enough and on the way we encountered a few different animals crossing the road. Most interestingly a snake and two massive, tarantuala like spiders! As, we drove up to the front of the hotel, I suddenly felt regret! I just knew then and there, this was not our kinda thing. We tried to check-in at what looked like check-in but we were told we need to go across to the 'Platinum' check-in where we would be 'more comfortable'. I realised at this point we were in the 'Deluxe' check-in. I still dont know which is meant to be the better or fancier check-in. The one we ended up in had seats, so im thinking maybe that one but I was fairly sure I had booked the cheapest room they have, however it was through Tui so maybe their customers get better stuff, I dont know! It made no difference whatsoever and just added to my anxiety I was already feeling about the place.

Our room looked pretty impressive. Certainly prettier and larger than all the cheap rooms we had stayed in so far. It came with free bottles of Tequila, Vodka and Rum as well as a stocked minibar that was all included, shame we dont really drink lol. The bathroom was quite impressive too with a double rainfall shower. We unpacked and then headed to the buffet for something to eat. The lunch had just finished and they only had snacks on, so we had a hotdog and got a couple of cocktails. We wandered around the complex. Checking out the pools and then went to the beach.

I am perfectly aware of the seaweed situation in Mexico. Around 7 years ago, Sargassum seaweed started to wash up on the shore of the entire Riviera Maya shore, by the tons! Everyday. Beleived to be an effect of gloal warming. They have workers that endlessly 'clean' it up in a desperate attempt to make the beach look like it should and allow people to swim in the sea. What should look like beautiful prisitne, white sand and turquoise waters are now brown, stinky and unswimmable. Some areas are worse than others and some times of year are better than others. I had watched lots of youtube videos about Mexico before we came. Many of them only a year ago and around the same time of year in the same kind of area and the beaches looked pretty good so I was hopeful. Unfortunately my hopes were dashed. It was so bad! I imagine there were beaches we could have gone to on a day trip or something that were unaffected but we never bothered. Occassionally we would check the beach just in case it had magically disappeared overnight, no such luck. Wish we had gone for a swim in Celestun now.

So this meant we would only have the pools to use. A long pool ran along each of the buildings. If you paid more, you could have a swim out room, which meant you could just step into the pool from your room. Although we were allowed to use any pool on the complex, this felt a bit weird, cause it felt like that bit of the pool belonged to the people staying in that room, so we didnt use that either. The main pool was the party pool. Now, this hotel was by normal standards, was empty. There were so few people around. This is great for us but the few people ( I say few, there was quite a lot of people but for the size of the hotel it was empty) that were there, were all in the big party pool. Screaming and shouting, getting hammered and dance swimming to the loud music. I'd say 60% of them were early 20's Americans. Not our scene at all. So we didnt use that pool either.

One place we did use a lot was the buffet restauarnt. I wasn't going to get my monies worth from the drinks or the pool or the beach so we put in a major effort to get it out of the food. There were 6 different places to eat including the buffet and one you had to pay for (not going there!) So we set out to go to a different one each night. They were all quite good but I think the most fun we had was at the Japanese restaurants Teppenyaki. The Mexican teppenyaki man who could not, for the life of him, actually perfom the utensil tricks. He dropped nearly every one of them. It was painful to watch, well for me it was. Rob found this to be the most hilarious thing he had ever seen and laughed openly at the poor guy. He was literally crying with laughter. He enjoyed it so much he wanted to go back another night but as the food was not great, we didnt.

I think it was the very next day that we both decided we were so bored we'd go to Tulum and see the ruins there. So glad we had kept the hire car. Once we finshed the ruins, we tried to find the main town but didn't have much luck. We were overheated anyway from the ruins. The day after we went into Play del Carmen town and had a look around. Its hard though because the heat is so intense that within 5 minutes i'm in a coffee shop or something, buying a cold drink, just so I can sit in the air con. Can't do that all day. So back to the hotel we went, were, when we were not eating piled plates of food at the buffet, we mainly sat in the air conditioned hotel room looking at our phones. This allowed for closer inspection of our '5 star' room. Everything was tatty, worn and damp. The bed had a waterproof fitted sheet on it and the sheet on top of that didnt even fit the bed, meaning it would ride up during the night. I complained to the concierge. Told them a 5 star hotel should not have waterproof sheets and should have sheet that actually fit the bed! She told me she would sort it out. They did not! Overall the rooms we had stayed in before were a lot better i'd say (except for the soundproofing). Even the wifi in this '5 star' hotel was weak and required a login. I had better, easier wifi at the £25 a night hotel in Merida and the finsh on that room was better too. Then theres the TV. Again this is a 5 star hotel and the TV was by far the worst we had had the whole trip. No way to connect to your phone to stream (remember we left our Chromecast in Puebla), no Netflix etc channels. Two porn channels though haha. There were a few friendly cats around though and some Coati's as well as Iguanas all over the place.

After our 5 nights we dropped the car back off at the airport and waited for our delayed flight back home.

All in all we had a great time and made more memories we will have forever. We actually used this trip as a test, to see if we would like to do another big 3 monther in Central America. What conclusion did we draw, well I dont think we quite know ourselves. I am a bit surprised that it wasn't a resounding YES though. It was quite hard work, it was just too hot for me to handle and it was really quite expensive. Mexico is almost as expensive as home for some things. One thing we did conclude though, after years of travelling to many different countries, we have come to the decision that Thailand is King! It is the perfect destination for us and it is our happy place. I had always vowed to not visit the same country before I had visited all the others first, well at least try and go somewhere we havent been before but despite having so many countries still to visit, I spent a lot of the time here wishing we had gone to Thailand instead, but that would have been for the fourth time!. I guess its a money thing really, you get so much more for your money in Thailand as well as the magic....the magic of Thailand that I just cant describe. So I reckon thats were we will go next. If we do decide to do the 3 month thing, then it is very likely to be somewhere is South East Asia.

I hope its not another six years before I return to write a blog again. I regret not doing a blog for our Thailand holiday in 2019 as I ofter re read our blogs and reminice and that one is lost other than the few memories we have managed to keep in our heads.

See you next time 😉

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