Judging by the pictures on Booking.com, this should be a rather nice hotel. But there is nothing nice about hotel Heart of the Ocean, Koh Rong, Cambodia. We are two couples sharing a room. The beds are surprisingly enough quite comfortable. The other surprises about Heart of the Ocean, apart from an AC that really works well, is however not.
Like having one of the worst bathrooms we’ve ever seen. When showering the whole bathroom becomes wet as the shower head is placed directly above the toilet. The toilet only flushes every other time. The drain is truly discusting and never gets cleaned. There are four people showering here once a day – you can just imagine what gets stuck in there… Oh, yes – there’s also an ant army living behind the wall, so don’t spray them with water; they will be quite mad.
The cleaning is overall non-existant. You need to leave your key at the reception and ask for the room to be cleaned. It does not help much. There is sand everywhere. I’ve never experienced so much sand in a bed before. We are not given enough towels, so we have to ”steal” extra towels from the washing line. Not even the beds are properly made up. A four-year-old could’ve done better.
We have a small patio outside the room, or it’s more of a stairwell. We have two chairs and a small table; our neighbours have sort of a hammock which is quite new, but really uncomfortable. Half of the chairs are broken, and there are not enough chairs for four people, so we have to sit on the floor. The view is the wall of the house in front. The third floor has a sea view glimpse. The first floor is gloomy and dark. And the rooms on the first floor are extremely damp.
To get to our hotel room you need to walk through a narrow and, at night, dark alley. People living there, or perhaps it’s the hotel staff, keep pouring out dirty water into the street. The narrow spaces between the houses have been used as dumps for years. There is a foul stench from time to time and we can’t really believe how you can live amongst all this smelling garbage, let alone let your kids roam around in it.
Altough Heart of the Ocean hotel has quite a good location on the main beach only steps from restaurants, bars and the ocean, we would not ever recommend anyone to stay there. It is very expensive for what you get. Koh Rong islands are not that cheap anymore, so prices are quite high overall. But there must be other hotel options, so please stay away from this one.
