Visited on May, 2012 - excellent experience, including hospitable services and people!

visited February 2012 on a honeymoon. we had room 28 which was amazing. Unfortunately we had a tick tack animal in the room (looks like a small lizard). it was great that the hotel changed our room to villa 26 which was safe from tick tack. it is a very different experience in the jungle.

My husband and I were looking forward to this spa retreat which we purchased from a travel fair. During this fair, the representative of Kupu kupu Barong was there and committed to the free two times 60 minutes spa for both of us and a romantic dinner.

Prior to our trip, we arranged everything with the local agent (who is collaborating with the hotel) on our schedule. We requested for the dinner on first night and spa on the second day. On top of that, we asked for confirmation if the 2 times 60 minutes spa can be combined to 1 time 120 minutes spa (on top of the mango tree, overseeing the Ayung river) and were told that everything is possible and has been confirmed.

Upon our arrival, we only asked the buttler to send our luggage to the room as we would like to go out directly to Ubud town. We managed to arrange for the 120-mins spa on the 3rd day at 9.00am because the spa was fully booked. We were confused (as of why our spa were not booked as requested) but accepting the changes. In the evening when we came back, we were told that the buggy (which is used to transfer the guests to their villa which is at the bottom of the cliff) was malfunction. And such, we had to take a stroll downhill with the buttler. The road was quite slippery, especially at night.

On the next day, we had to climb back to the top for our breakfast. Going up is definitely harder than going down. After our trip back from water rafting, we were again told that buggy was still malfunction. (We expected a quicker repair service from a 5-star hotel). Anyway, we had to take the painful stroll up and down the hill. To make the things worse, we saw one buggy sending a Japanese couple to their room. At that moment, it gave us the image that we were treated differently from the Japanese. It was unfair to discriminate Malaysian from Japanese or other nationalities just because we are neighbour countries. I believed we paid the same amount of money per night of stay in this hotel. To be discriminated is definitely the last thing we wanted to experience in our "dream retreat". We did confronted the front-desk and they took a long time to give us an explaination. We were told that the buggy was only able to serve the villas on top of the hill and not the one at the bottom of the hill (by the way, villa at the bottom is more expensive). We would have appreciated a better explaination the first time around (on the first day) when we were told that all buggy were malfunction. An honest explaination would have saved us the agony of being discriminated.

And on the third day, we were excited to experience our first L'ocitane spa. Everything was great until we were guided to the spa room. It was an indoor spa and not the promised tree spa. There were a lot of confusion and they could not arrange us on the tree-top spa. They even told us that tree-spa is the name of their spa. I was very disappointed at how words were twisted just to confuse us. The lady (Yanni) who came to Malaysia during the travel fair (and promised the tree-spa) came to meet us. She was not even apologic of the whole incident but started to blame the tour agency in Malaysia and everyone in the loop. She even blamed us for not contacting and arranging with the hotel for our spa. I believed we do not have to go through all this trouble, since the hotel has the collaboration with the tour agency in Malaysia. Why should I engaged a tour agency and still have to contact the hotel AND the agency for every single arrangement? Shouldnt it be enough just to arrange with the tour agency? I was confused and even angrier listening to all the blaming drama. And next, she told us that tree-spa does not cater for spa... but only massage.. Again, spa that does not do spa but only massage. Should the tree-spa be called tree-massage? Then, she blamed us for combining our 2 times 60 mins spa to 1 time 120 mins spa as a reason of why they did not put us on the tree spa. Throughou the whole 45 mins there, not only we did not get our spa, we were blamed in different ways.. just to say that it was all our own fault for not getting our 120mins tree spa. And by the way, we could not choose the spa we wanted. It was very specific spa, pre-determined by the hotel (apparently due to the fact that it is part of the package). We were so deeply disappointed by how the staff handle situation like this. Customers were blamed to make the hotel look "good". This is by far, the worst experience we had on a spa resort. We even let go of the spa, as we felt cheated and mistreated. Never again would we go back to such a place where you were treated like a third-class citizen. It is not worth risking your "dream vacation/retreat". I would rather pay more for a peace of mind.

It was a shame that up till today (one week after this incident), nobody from the hotel contacted us to apologise or give us a full explaination. I believe it will take a long time before the staff from this hotel reach a professional standard in handling situations. All in all, it's definitely NOT worth the money paid. We went there to de-stress but came back to our beloved country, more stressed than before. What an eventful trip! (I would not even call it a vacation).

I was very much looking forward to a peaceful retreat and had paid for a villa by the river and with an outdoor pool. Instead I got a villa on the mountainside and with an indoor plunge pool.. The villa was decorated for Las Vegas and had a musty smell -with little resemblance to the photos on the hotel´s website. The butler was friendly and helpful, though I was greatly disappointed with the restaurant staff. I did receive an email from the hotel´s manager apologizing for their mistakes in the booking, though would have preferred to have gotten the villa I had reserved and received no compensation for the price difference.