The Hideaway Resort in Hua Hin

How one hotel stay turned my impression of Thailand and Thai hospitality upside down in less than 24 hours.

I initially tried to book a room through the hotel’s Line chat, but the staff member I was communicating with clearly had some serious cognitive issues. No matter how clearly I explained, wrote, and even showed exactly which room I wanted, for what price, and for which dates, they seemed completely incapable of understanding. It felt like talking to a malfunctioning chatbot rather than a human being. After wasting a ridiculous amount of time trying to make them understand, I gave up and booked the room through Agoda instead.

Looking back, this was the first major red flag that I foolishly ignored: if the booking process was already this frustrating, I should have realized that our stay would be a disaster.

When we arrived, things only got worse. We had paid extra for a Jacuzzi room, expecting a touch of luxury. What we got instead was an absolute joke: a ceramic hole in the ground where water trickled from a wooden box. If you stopped filling it, the water would drain out completely within 10 minutes. It looked less like a Jacuzzi and more like an irrigation pit for watering plants. The fact that they had the audacity to charge extra for this disaster was beyond insulting.

On the first night, we discovered huge cockroaches running around the bathroom, no toothbrushes were provided, and the room was disgustingly dirty. It was far from the romantic stay we had envisioned.

But that was just the beginning of our nightmare.

The real horror began the next day. My wife suddenly fell seriously ill, with a high fever of 39°C (102°F). I begged the hotel staff to call an ambulance immediately, but they just stood there, smiling, doing absolutely nothing. Despite my desperate pleas, they repeatedly told me that she should walk to a clinic herself. It took half an hour of me begging for help before an ambulance finally arrived.

When we got to the hospital, things only got worse. The hospital staff refused to provide any medical assistance until we paid them in crisp dollar bills or provided an insurance guarantee. They saw my wife suffering in agony, screaming in pain, yet they just stared at her blankly, waiting for money. We have provided our insurance certificate, yet they forced us to handle the talk with the insurance, while my wife is screaming in pain on a stretcher. After spending three hours there and receiving absolutely no help unless we provide full payment upfront to start doing at least something, we were forced to leave, but not before paying $150 just for being taken to the hospital where nothing was done.

When we returned to the hotel, with my wife still feeling terrible, the staff at Hideaway Resort greeted us not with concern and reassurance, but with demands for extra payment for the additional time we had spent in the room while she was in agony. The staff knew it was our honeymoon, they knew we were struggling, yet when I reminded them of this and asked for at least some moral support, the receptionist simply stared at me like a robot and continued demanding money.

At that moment, I realized I had come to the worst place on earth — a place where people can coldly watch my wife suffering, do nothing, and still demand more and more money from me. I will never return to Thailand. This country is cursed for me, all thanks to this hotel.

Stay away from this place if you value your dignity and humanity.