Udorn Hotel Experience: The President

I stayed at the Hotel President out in Udorn, and I'd recommend it to anybody. A very new place, with nice carpet and beautiful tile jobs everywhere, tasteful appointments, a fabulous free breakfast (with an egg station!), good cable TV, a shower almost as good as the one in my (rented) condo (which is the single best shower in Thailand), free pick-up and delivery to and from the airport, and more than adequate beds and pillows. That is was clean goes without saying. I have never wanted for cleanliness in any hotel that I've stayed at in Thailand, no matter how cheap, and I've gone down to six bucks. The President was twenty-eight dollars, regular price anyway, I got a discount, the price for prof's of my university was twenty-one.

I always say that in Thailand, everything is a party. Work; funerals; classes; shopping; cooking; actual parties; it's all party-time, all the time. This is usually a good thing, usually. On Sunday, I took a slow day which included a nap in the afternoon, and during my nap the staff made up the neighboring room. The party thing was in full force.

I have never heard such heavy foot-falls outside of a Godzilla movie, and they went on for the entire half-hour duration of the room cleaning. So did the loud clinking of bottles and/or glasses. A part of room cleaning is replacing the two, free bottles of water in the mini-bar, and the various glasses in the room, but constant clinking for a half-hour seemed like too much. They seemed to be moving around all of the room furniture, with lots of banging and dragging going on. Then there was the shouted conversation, with much laughter, at loud volume, seemingly at long distance, as though the speakers were cleaning different rooms at the time.

And mysteriously, a frequent sound as though heavy, uninsulated wire were being pulled through conduit. I have no idea what that was.

In general, though, the President was an excellent hotel experience, in every way. I'd recommend it to anybody.