We stayed at the La Playa in Ao Nang for the third leg of our tour in Thailand last year, booking through Trailfinders as the rate was reasonable and the reviews looked decent. I am afraid it did not live up to expectations. We arrived and were shown our room on the ground floor with a pool view, room looked decent enough however there were no nets or blinds which meant that there was scant little privacy & anyone in the pool area could look directly into our room unless we had the curtains fully closed & therefore a completely dark room. I could have coped with this but things went from questionable to worse when we saw the shoddy bathroom and the fact that our 'double' was actually two singles not even pushed together to form a bigger bed but placed horizontally alongside each other so that the 'join' was right about where your hips would lay (really bizarre!!) Because of this, and the fact that the fridge decided to emit a constant buzz and then leak water everywhere, we had an abysmal first night and decided to confront reception about these short-comings. We requested an upgrade and after a bit of debate about the rest of the hotel being booked by a Singaporean group (who mysteriously failed to materialize!) we were eventually shown two alternative rooms by the manageress. The one we chose on the first floor with a side pool-and-mountain view was much nicer, with a proper bathroom including both shower, bath and internal windows that opened up on to the bedroom. In fact we were really surprised at the difference in quality between the ground and first floor accommodation and wondered why Trailfinders didnt make this distinction more obvious - we would have gladly paid the extra had we known!
The accommodating manageress notwithstanding, the rest of the hotel was nothing to write home about to be honest: the pool area was nothing special, the breakfast area was cramped and needed updating, the buffet breakfast on offer was rather limited with items kept under net baskets failing miserably to keep the flies out; a number of the servers had unhappy unsmiling faces & werent that obliging. The grounds of the hotel were lovely if totally unkempt, a garden pavilion and bar which you walked passed to get to the breakfast terrace were deserted and unused, such a shame as with proper landscaping and maintenance the gardens could be such a bonus to this locale. I would also warn that the location of the La Playa is not ideal, being at a juncture with other properties/hotels up a dusty road and at the tail end of the main strip in Ao Nang, as such quite a distance to get to the local eateries, shops, beach and boating facilties. There was apparently a back door from the pool area that led down to the beach but I honestly failed to see how it could lead to the beach unless you catapulted yourself over the walls of the neighbouring properties! All in all, we were grateful for the room upgrade which made our stay much more comfortable and the view from our balcony was very nice, but the rest of our time spent here was somewhat disappointing.