Originally Posted by clearedforlanding

I just completed a 3 night stay here. Was upgraded to a Valley Villa from a standard king.

I'm quite surprised at the amount of positive reviews this place gets.... I'm going to present the counterview because I think it might help people more like me avoid having the same experience. I want to caveat though - the staff here are really sweet, really kind and helpful people. And a bunch of this is probably down to personal preference on the experience we were prepared for.

First off - the property is just clearly old. Everything is a bit tired/dated. Some Valley Villas are clearly abandoned, for example. Ours wasn't, and the team here were amazing at cleaning/turning it down every night but they really had to be because every morning/evening the floor of the (non air conditioned) bathroom was strewn with dead flies/ants. Valley Villas are broken in two halves, with an open air walkway with a pond/bathtub between the bedroom and bathroom. The pond was green and clearly unkept. I have no idea who would dare take a bath in the tub. Our fears were confirmed when we discovered a snake in the tub one morning.

Everyone makes mention of the monkeys here. They were really the least of our concerns (although one other guest did seem to rush off one evening to the hospital after being bitten). The Valley Villa is really 'in the jungle'. And at night the jungle closes in. Every night you're surrounded by the intense sounds of the nature around you. Hopefully mainly frogs, but you find yourself questioning that when some new sounds pop up what seem like inches from your head. Frogs also have a tendency to end up in the room overnight, so watch when you step out of bed. We could just about deal with once we got over their jumping. But on the second night we had a bedside snake for a total of two in the villa during our stay. It was pretty scary for us (and for the poor housekeeper we had sent to get rid of it) and we were left paranoid about what else was lurking around for the rest of the stay. The point is - these villas are not at all sealed. You're going to get visitors at night. Avoid if this is going to be scary for you like it was for us. In retrospect, we should have just downgraded back to a standard king room on the second floor of one of the main buildings where it was less likely visitors would be crawling in all night.

The hotel facilities are okay. The pool is huge and nice. But there really isn't much. And it's pretty far from Ubud itself. This isn't a resort I'd personally want to stay in for multiple days, there just isn't enough variety. While they advertise a 48 hour unlimited spa experience which sounded great in theory, in reality they don't have the capacity for it - the place was far from full when we were there but there were hardly any bookings available. They just don't have the staff.

Food is just fine. Breakfast is civilised and a la carte, I liked that the menu changed daily. And again the team here were fantastic, remembering names and being incredibly polished. For other meals, the food is just okay but lacked flavour. There's so much better in town. I'd recommend Honey and Smoke a new must try for modern Australian, and Nusantara if you want to try Indonesian. Once you've done these you'll be underwhelmed by anything you eat back at the Alila.