Unknown Inn- Padangbai, Bali, Indonesia

Address: Unknown; in a lane off the main road in Padangbai (Jalan Pedabuhan Padangbai).

Website: unknown

We had just spent over an hour on a shuttle bus going from Ubud to Padangbai, and had just escaped the clutches of an overeager owner of a new inn who ushered us in to see his rooms which were brand spanking new and extremely nice but which was still being built, when we happened along this hostel unnamed and unknown. This little laneway running parallel to the main street along the shore of Padangbai had most of the hostels in this area within a few metres, and which we spent a night there. We had originally planned to stay a week in this town but due to several horrible situations that we found ourselves in, we'd quickly decided to move on and get the hell away from this place which seemed to act as a deep and menacing hole to which we were being pursued in an unexplainable but evil manner.

The hostel seemed nice enough, and indeed it was the best choice there was after inspecting several other places of budget accommodation. Indeed, I heard a fellow traveller from another room remark to her friends that this place was the fanciest place she'd stayed in so far.
There were two levels of rooms (beware, the flight of stairs were very steep and very narrow) and our room with hot shower was negotiated to be Rp 80 000 per night for a week's stay (down from Rp 100 000). The room was nice enough, with white tiles on the floor and a functional bathroom, if a bit icky feeling (it also had a cistern-less toilet). The bedspread looked a bit old though, but the fan worked which was all we asked for.

But it would soon prove useless because...

There was a 3-4 hour period that night from around 8pm-midnight where the electricity was cut off in the whole town. We were sitting in a restaurant eating when all the lights, everything went out and it was pitch black. It seemed to be a regular occurrence as without batting an eyelid, the restaurants swiftly lit their candles and continued on with the dinner service. We went back to the hostel, thinking that it'd all be fixed soon enough but having no idea that we'd have several hours of waiting ahead of us. Without electricity, that meant the fan was useless and the room very soon got extremely, EXTREMELY HOT. It felt like it was literally 50 degrees, and after lying there sweating our of our ears, we took the possible mosquito bites over slow death and sat outside on the edge of the balcony. Even though it was still warm outside (this is the tropics), it was much better than remaining indoors and we sat there (surprisingly mosquito free) until midnight when our room had significantly cooled down from the night air we'd let in.

The breakfast was made by a guy who although was asked for an egg and tomato jaffle from the menu (and was even pointed to the item by a finger), made a tomato jaffle. Yup, two pieces of toasted bread with a piece of tomato in it and nothing else. Does that make sense to anyone? I understand that his English wouldn't have been exactly fluent but the pointed finger would have definitely made inroads with another average Indonesian. Anyways, it came with bali tea or coffee, and surprisingly, the tea was quite nice. A plate of pineapple and bananas came with the breakfast which was quite nice.

So it wasn't really the hostel's fault that we had a nightmarish night so I'll exclude the uselessness of the fan for half the night in my review, and say that it was a decent place to stay (if one doesn't happen to stay in this town for the one night of the month where they cut the town's electricity for half the night, as an employee in the hostel told us when we went downstairs to ask what was going on).

Rating: 7/10