Lots of Staff - Where are the Guests?


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Asia » Malaysia » Terengganu » Pulau Redang
October 3rd 2017
Published: October 4th 2017
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I'm relieved to wake up and find that I don't seem to have developed rabies during the night.

Issy's still feeling the after effects of the last two days' travelling, so I set off for breakfast on my own and see the resort‘s massive grounds for the first time in daylight. It's next to a harbour and seems to have lots of very good looking tropical resort type rooms in buildings called "blocks", each containing four rooms. I usually associate blocks with prisons or public housing estates, but this looks to be a step up from either of those. There also seem to be lots of excellent looking recreational facilities here including an olympic size infinity swimming pool, a gym, a soccer ground and a large children's playground. The only thing that seems to be missing is the guests. I get to breakfast and realise that I haven't seen one yet. There are a handful of diners in the restaurant, including a couple of newlyweds. She's still in her dress - all white, with a long train, and the traditional Muslim head scarf. I hope she took all that lot off at some stage last night.

Despite all the facilities there doesn’t really seem to be a lot to do here. There’s no beach, and it’s not within walking distance of the town. There's a very large water sports centre, and as I peer through the door I can see lots of boats inside it. There are also lots of boats outside it. It’s supposed to be open, but it isn’t, and it doesn’t look like it has been for quite some time. There’s also a minimart, but that’s not open either. I'm glad we're leaving today.

The staff heavily outnumber the diners. I count six of them waiting to make me an omelette - one of them makes it while the other five look on. Someone must have told the resort's many gardeners that they're not allowed to make any noise before 9am. At 9.01am a hedge trimmer starts outside our window, followed very quickly by a whipper snipper. The noise is deafening. I get on my iPad for some distraction, but the wifi's virtually non-existent. We then find that our toilet's become blocked, possibly from extreme underuse. I wonder if this place will still be in business in a few months time. It was very cheap, and the price did seem a little out of kilter with the description of its size and facilities. Most of the staff other than the gardeners seem to have virtually nothing to do, and they seem to outnumber the guests by about ten to one. The whole place reminds me of an episode from “Yes Minister” where the Minister goes to open a new wing of a state-of-the-art hospital, which has four hundred staff and no patients. I doubt they can afford all these workers if there's no one staying here. I wonder what they're paying them; I hope they're paying them. I begin to wonder whether some of them might actually be guests looking for something to do.

We catch a taxi thirty or so kilometres up the coast to the small town of Merang Jetty where we board a speedboat out to our ultimate destination - the island of Pulau Redang. Signs on the jetty warn against taking heavy articles on our tiny craft with us; quoted examples include refrigerators and cupboards. I’m not quite sure why anyone would want to take their own fridge with them to a resort, unless perhaps they were planning to hold a really big party. I wonder if this happens a lot.

As we sit in reception waiting to check in we hear what sounds like a small child screaming. But no, it seems that it’s actually a Chinese girl in her early twenties who was on our speedboat with her boyfriend. She‘s carrying on like a two year old, and no one else in the vicinity’s quite sure which way to look. It seems she’s not happy with something her boyfriend‘s said or done. I think he might be in for a long few days.

We check into our room, or should I say rooms. It seems we’ve been upgraded to a massive suite, complete with separate living and bed rooms. We’re high on the hill with stunning views from our balcony down over the spectacular beach. The sand‘s almost pure white and looks like it slopes down gently into crystal clear water.

There‘s a sign on the door out on to the balcony warning to keep it closed to avoid the room being invaded by monkeys. It goes on to say that feeding monkeys is a severe offence under Malaysian law. They still have the death penalty here, so we resolve to keep the balcony door firmly shut at all times. We wouldn’t want to get hauled in front of a firing squad because a monkey snuck in and pinched a peanut. Actually I think they hang people here rather than shoot them, not that this should do anything to affect our resolution.

We spend the afternoon vegging in the room, and then head down to one of the hotel's restaurants for dinner. All the reviews we read when we booked this place back in January said that the resort and beach were lovely, but the service was really terrible. There were reports of people waiting hours to get room service delivered and then getting the wrong food, and staff arguing with guests. The reviews seemed to suggest that this was an issue for a lot of hotels on the east coast of Malaysia, as the local staff they employ just aren’t particularly good at hotel service. I’m not quite sure why this should be. They seem like nice people, and they all say hello to us and smile a lot. The more recent reviews seem to suggest that the service might be improving. I order a Tiger Beer, but the waiter tells me that they‘ve just run out. Issy orders mushroom soup, but it seems the mushroom truck didn’t turn up today. She looks for something else while I order spring rolls, but they’ve run out of those as well. This is not going well. The waiter looks very embarrassed. He shows us his handwritten list of things that aren’t available; it seems we want the only three items out of the hundred or so on the menu that they don’t have. Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket. Oh hang on; I think gambling might be illegal here….

The waiter asks us if we‘ve been to Indonesia. He introduces himself as Max and says that he comes from Lombok near Bali, as does one of the other waiters. It seems that importing staff from elsewhere is one of the strategies the hotel’s employed to try to improve the service. Max says that he‘s here in Malaysia on a two year contract. He says that when the monsoon comes in November and the resort shuts down he‘ll be sent to work at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. He says he likes it here but it is a bit boring. He says it’s not like Bali where there are lots of parties; he says all he does is work and then go back to veg in his quarters. I hope they’re paying him well.

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5th January 2019

Great blog! Name of your accommodation on Redang?
Hello! My 16 yo daughter and I are planning on travelling through Malaysia including the east coast islands. We've heard that the places to stay on Palau Rendang are mainly local group tourist bookings where you need to plan your day from breakfast to dinner with snorkelling in between... I loved reading your blogs and would love to know the name of the place you stayed on Redang and whether you would recommend it? Thanks! Shell & Mia
6th January 2019

Pulau Redang
Hi Shell and Mia, Many thanks for your message. We stayed at the Taaras Beach and Spa Resort. It was a bit pricey but we really enjoyed it. The beach that it's on is absolutely spectacular, and the beach in the next cove around (about a 15 minute walk) was even better - probably the best beach I've ever seen, and we've been to a lot of beaches. It never seemed to have any people at it, and we still don't know why. It was the end of season coming into the monsoon which might have had something to do with it, but the weather when we were there (early October) was fine. All we wanted to do was relax at the end of a couple of months away, so this place suited us just fine. There's probably not a lot to do if you wanted a really active holiday, so depends what you're looking for. Good food and service (service apparently used to be terrible based on the reviews we saw, but they've now imported a whole bunch of staff from Lombok and they were excellent), and very nice rooms overlooking the beach. The resort is all on its own with no others anywhere near it; all the other resorts on the island seemed to be on Redang Long Beach which is on the other side of the island. The beach there was OK but not as nice as the Taaras Beach, and the resorts didn't look as nice either from what we could see from the outside. There would however probably be a bit more to do there if that's what you were looking for. We loved Pulau Redang and would highly recommend it. Good luck, and please don't hesitate to get back in touch if we can help more. Cheers, Dave and Issy

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