Review of Terrace Ampels Villa
I booked two nights in the dorm at Terrace Ampels Villa near Padang Padang beach, in Uluwatu. I stayed zero nights.
When I arrived the staff were kind of grumpy and didn't smile (which I normally wouldn't notice, but because of the attitude of all other Balinese, it stood out). I ate in the restaurant, and worked on my laptop there for a few hours. There's a really nice infinity pool overlooking trees. There were lots of bugs and bats and geckos, which I thought was cool, though some people might not like.
A locker in the dorm room was 50k non-refundable which is unusual but whatever.
Around 11pm I went into the dorm, changed into my pyjamas and climbed up to my bunk. I saw bedbugs crawling along the wood frame. I immediately got down, moved my stuff, and went out to find staff because no. fucking. way. was I staying in a bed with bedbugs again. Not after last time.
I found the kitchen staff, and they woke the desk staff. By this time a couple of other dorm occupants had come back and were sitting around/in the pool. One of them, H, had been badly bitten the night before and she was covered in bites and itchy like I had been a couple of weeks ago. A forth dorm occupant heard about the bugs, and collectively we asked to be moved to another room.
The staff offered us another dorm, downstairs, completely empty. We went to check it out, discovered more bugs and giant cockroaches in the beds. So we came back upstairs, and all the staff had disappeared.
Sooo... four of us packed our stuff and moved down the road to a hotel, to share twin rooms. We checked into the new place about 1am.
The next day we came back to Terrace Ampels to ask for our money back for the night we hadn't stayed (and for me, the next night which I'd pre-paid for).
The staff were to start with kind of unwilling and dithering, until eventually becoming outright rude. They kept saying the had to talk to the boss, we had to wait for the boss.. And meanwhile aggressively asking the other guests why they hadn't complained sooner, since they'd stayed there one or two nights already. The guy who had been there the longest was yelled at by the desk staff: "It's you, you are telling everyone, you are causing this" like he planted the bedbugs or something.. Eventually we had to say we had better things to do than wait around there all day, and we'd come back later.
We were back around 8pm. The boss wasn't there, obviously, and the staff had claimed to talk to the boss and he said no refund. I said no way am I paying 350k for five minutes in the room! The guy tried to say they had no money there, and then also said he'd checked the room and there were no bugs! Like we'd moved fucking hotels at 1 o'clock in the morning for fun. And of course ignoring the fact H was covered in itchy red bumps from head to toe (literally, they bit her face, even I wasn't that unlucky).
Eventually I pushed enough that they gave me the money back for the night that hadn't occurred yet, and the locker rental. So I was down 150k for the night I'd left for the hotel, but better than nothing.
In contrast, when I cut my stay short at Monkey House in Canggu because of bedbugs, they offered to take me to the doctor, cleaned all my stuff, and had no trouble when I wanted to leave. In related contrast, when two of our number changed their plans and wanted to leave the hotel we moved to down the road from Terrace Ampels after one night, they refunded the second night no questions asked and with a smile.