Originally Posted by
vuittonsofstyle
Most people do not walk from their hotels to see the sights - you get a car and driver - so I have never been too concerned that Rajvilas was out in the sticks compared to, say, The Rambagh Palace, which is much closer to everything.
Well we are now out of India in Bangkok, a bit of a relief I have to say after 8 days of curry, got very monotonous - so much better food/choice in Thailand, I don't know if there was anything really worth going out to in Jaipur but it's more of a trek from Rajvillas, plus we got stuck with a 7200 rupee taxi bill for 40km or so journey (9 hours) because of the total lack of alternative transport options there. Actually they tried to charge me for 10 hours which I pointed out was wrong - they said '12:30 to 9:15pm is 9 hours 45 minutes'. I said 'No, it's 8 hours 45 minutes'. At this point he pulled out his calculator and said '9:15 minus 12:30 is 8 hours 85 minutes, 85 minutes is more than one hour so it's 10 hours'. After about 10 minutes he corrected the bill.... Annoying, especially when I then bought something from the giftshop, they charged me in $ without asking, and then denied it, even though it was clearly printed on the bill....
The Rambagh is a lot fresher than Rajvilas as it was re-done more recently. Rajvilas was the first of Oberoi's Vilas hotels so the design of its accommodation is showing its age.
Actually the Rajvilas I think had better room/bathroom (excluding the view) than the Amarvilas. They gave us a room with balcony for day use at Amarvilas after check-out and it was on the lobby floor towards the end and it had no view of the Taj Mahal at all. Not sure if they ever sell it to customers who have booked a balcony room (at 5000 rupee supplement), but I suspect perhaps not.
Did you not dine in the cooking school there, where they do excellent thalis?
Saw it on the list of things to do, didn't register particularly. I noticed a nightly procession of people for the poolside dining - quite nice with the hundreds of tealights lighting the steps, only weird thing was the 'Magic FM'-type music they were playing. I would have thought for the 4500 rupees/head they could have provided you with your own private musician.
Amarvilas felt like a bit of a procession of tour buses, the entrance through the shopping mall was quite tacky IMO although the general architecture is nice, albeit the pool lacks Taj view (nice bar with Taj view though near the lobby). Service was rather impersonal, I went to reception just after midnight (arrived late from Jaipur on delayed train - not recommended btw, road stopping off at Fatehpur Sikri at perhaps the Balaji temple (I read of exorcisms here?) is better) and asked if they could arrange train tickets to Delhi for me in the morning, giving full details, they said they would call me before 9:30am. In the morning they had no record of my request so had to repeat it.
Breakfast repeated the slightly impersonal service as food took a long time to arrive, menu was basically a subset of the other -vilas hotels; unlike the other hotels the buffet had hot items, however they weren't hot basically because they had been sitting there at least half an hour with no kind of heating! On checkout we were charged 4900 rupees ($120) for breakfast although it was included in our rate, were also charged for a random small minibar item we hadn't consumed. The Oberois do not tend to issue bills for each transaction however I don't trust them at all not to make mistakes so I am not sure this is really wise, especially as you don't receive the itemised bills on check-out.
Overall thoughts? Well we won't be back to India in a hurry (actually we have two nights in Mumbai in September), I think we would have had a much better time if the food had been more varied though.... One advantage of India - shopping is much cheaper there, am getting sticker shock in Bangkok with the baht at 48 to the pound went in the Adidas store at Siam Discovery I think it was 3000 baht for a polo shirt, otoh bought Levis in India for about half the UK price. Was quite amused by the Steinway & Son store in the Siam mall, wonder if their customers here actually plan to play it.