Best Western Ubud: a modern oasis

We had been jumping from hotel to hotel, country to country – all we wanted was to relax, but even the taxi drive was 3 hours long – traffic on narrow roads is worse than Bangkok. When we reached the Best Western Ubud hotel… The heel of my shoe came off! I should have asked for some super glue straight away, but for some reason I waited until the last day. That previous sentence actually sounds like a poem, you can read it again and you’ll see.

Check-in:

We didn’t even have a chance to open our suitcase and a tray of complimentary drinks and fruit arrived on our table. There were also cool innovative buttons in the room, which you press to indicate if you want them to clean your room, or not disturb you, and the staff can see the lights outside. It’s a modern replacement for the hangable paper signs which we hadn’t seen before.

The room:

When we walked in we felt like we were walking into our own semi-detached house with a garden. It was basically a huge room with a huge bed, huge bathroom, and a terrace. I guess that’s why it’s called “executive” room. We absolutely loved the bathroom which had views of pretty palm trees and rice fields, visible whilst in the actual bath.

We also loved the resort because of other things like tiled floor, a wide shower head, and most importantly – bathrobes (!), a.k.a. executive clothing. You can’t beat walking around a spacious huge room in a bathrobe and looking at green fields and palm trees through the bathroom window.

The furniture was simple yet had an authentic charm, good working desk, which we used more for storing electronics than doing actual work. If we did work, we just stayed in bed because they’re super comfortable. The pillows are way too big though, so we piled a mountain and lay on them whilst typing stuff.

There was dark wood with beautiful carvings everywhere you look – the doors, the table, the wardrobe, every piece of furniture in the room, even the patio outside.

Impeccable service:

We started taking photos asap and one staff came over and started cleaning the windows! We didn’t even notice the condensation, but that was really well thought-of, in addition to a pre-air-conditioned room.

There was a pretty big spider in the bathroom who came to say hello, so we asked the service staff to catch it. They did so, and even apologised for the spider! That’s a bit over the top, but shows how nice they are.

Another surprise was the “wind-down service”. After our lunch we felt the room was somehow different. First of all they cleaned everything, and then they put a towel next to the bath, folded the corners of the blanked on the bed, closed the blinds, and put the slippers out. That basically means it’s evening – take a bath and go to bed. Crazy-amazy.

Facilities:

The pool looks amazing. Although if you’ve just come to Bali from the UK – any pool will look amazing. The whole area is so beautiful, calm, peaceful. Most importantly, in the bar area they play really good modern beats.

We’ve both managed to hit the gym as well. If you’re into bodybuilding – you know hotel gyms can be pretty crappy. Why would you want to lose all your gains on a treadmill?? You’ll love it though, as it has a chest machine, lat pulldown, cable row, leg machine, and even dumbbells that don’t stop at 10kg! Auste used the room floor to do her pilates stuff.

Food:

For breakfast we had so much choice we didn’t know where to start. Fruit, muesli, pastries, salad, egg station where you can order them the way you like and quite a few clay pots with Balinese specialties. They make their own pesto for the salad! Maybe you’re not as excited about it as we are, but proper basil pesto in Asia (!) was almost like a birthday gift. Of course we had croissants with some jam as well – got to keep that balance, right?

For dinner we had a couple of things. FYI, you won’t struggle with finding vegetarian food in Bali! The Balinese potato curry with broccoli and cauliflower was amazing. We love Indian curries and this tasted very similar.

The mushroom soup was nice and creamy, with smooth silky texture. We also tried their carbonara (a veggie version without the bacon) which was great.

One of the desserts was a banana split, with quality ice cream, the other one was fried bananas, which tasted similar to doughnuts – really yummy.

Overall we were really impressed with their vegetarian adaptations – not many places can do them well.

The verdict:

For the price it’s actually a steal. We like staying at 5-star hotels when we want to treat ourselves, but resorts are a totally different thing, because not only you get all the good things like the room and service, but also the atmosphere, and the views.