Ranee's Guest House and Restaurant, Bangkok

I spent a day in Bangkok before heading South to Koh Samui and pre-booked this place as my place to stay when I returned to Bangkok later in the week. The main floor of the building is a restaurant, and it looked resonably clean for Bangkok so I booked the room without looking at it. BIG MISTAKE. I came back from the South later in the week, arrived at midnight and went up to the room. (In what proved to be a smart move, I asked to see the room before I paid.) It was a dump. Squalid. A thin mattress covered with a dirty sheet with cigarette burns in it. The walls are made of thin plywood and you can hear everything from the entire hostel and in fact the street outside. There were bugs everywhere, both dead and alive. The lock on the door was broken. There was one window, with big wooden shutters but no screen, so many buggies. No fan. I sat on the bed for 5 minutes, realized it was so dirty I didn't want to touch anything and then walked out, leaving the staff confused but not surprised. The fact that I would wander away into the streets of Bangkok alone at midnight without a place to stay speaks for how bad this place is. Traveling in SE Asia and staying in Hostels does require that you lower your standards a bit, but there are many clean, cheap hostels in Bangkok that fulfil the basic needs of a clean bathroom/shower and clean bedding. I stayed in three different hostels in Bangkok and they were great. The Khao San Road area seems to sprout these cheap, tenement-style hostels for drunken westerners willing to crash anywhere after a night of partying. If you don't really care about noise levels, clean bedding, bugs, or a door lock; then this place is cheap, 4-5 dollars (USD) a night. It is very convienently located, only 1 block from the action and nightlife of Khao San Road. They have late check-in, I arrived at midnight with no problems. The staff was friendly. I do not recommend this hostel.