Cruiser Island Resort, Ban ra wai (1)

I would never recommend this resort. It has been a horror from the beginning to the end. For 4600baht per night, you would expect competent service. I've stayed in backpackers paying 300baht per night which have provided better experiences. The positives - the bungalows are air conditioned, clean and in decent shape, however half of them back the staff quarters. The staff are quite noisy in the morning so you would not have much of a chance to sleep in past 7am. All of the bungalows have a pool view. The pool is extremely small around 8 by 4 metres hence there is no possibility to have a swim. The negatives - quite a lot. The people at this resort have a very relaxed attitude to time. We have arranged with the resort to pick us up at Phuket airport at 7.10am for 900baht. No one was there to meet us. After 2 phone calls to the resort, a driver made an appearance at around 8.10am. He was expecting to pick up another guest. We asked him when this other guest would arrive as we had already waited at the airport for 1 and a half hours. Apparently he was coming in on the 8.40am flight. Fuming, tired and worn down from sitting in noisy smoky phuket airport, we waited, and waited and waited. By around 9.30am it was pretty clear he was not arriving, we had made numerous phone calls to the resort requesting to be driven there to no avail. Eventually this driver asked us to pay the airport limo 500baht to drive us to the pier while he waited for the other guest, which we refused since we were already paying him. Finally at 10.10am an alternative vehicle was procured. We eventually got to our rooms around 11.30am 4 and a half hours after arrival!! We got a welcome drink which we consumed and housekeeping omitted to clean up. The dirty glasses were still sitting on our balcony when we left 4 days later. The food in the restaurant is overpriced but we were expecting that given we were on an island. However the competence of the staff was extrodinarily bad. We cope with missing dishes, getting meals which are completely different from what we ordered and extremely long wait times. For example, I ordered breakfast, and judging that they might get it wrong, I specifically pointed to the item on the menu and repeated it twice for the waitress. She proceeded to serve me a completely different meal. I judged it better to consume than to argue. There are only 2 scheduled boat rides to phuket per day at 10am and 5.30pm. If you wanted to leave the island on an unscheduled time, you would have to pay 300baht. I would have been happy to spend most of my time on the island, however they did not offer much facilites the pool being tiny, the beach unswimmable during low tide and no other amusements on offer, and the restaurant too frustrating to eat in. When we were settling our bill, we found that they tried to charge us for our boat rides to phuket during the agreed scheduled hour. On leaving, we arranged for their boat to take us to the mainland. We were assured that there were no other people to wait for hence there would be no problems getting to our flight on time. We did get picked up at the agreed time, however the boatman ran out of petrol and we had to return to the island for more petrol before actually leaving for phuket 45mins late and nearly missing our flight.