Jul 192011
 

The Laithong Hotel is located in the eastern part of Ubon. It’s a no-kidding hotel operation in a multi-room, multi-story building. It has decent reviews in Agoda and TripAdvisor – better than most in Ubon.

It’s expensive at 1800 baht a night for their “deluxe” room, which is a basic hotel room with a Western bathroom. The room also has air conditioning and a mini-bar. Breakfast is included.

We stayed here for one night, initially getting a “deluxe” room. It was clean, save for a little mustiness from having carpet. The problem came with the wi-fi that the hotel advertises – we lost the router signal within a few feet of the door to the room. Since we wanted to get some work done, and were paying a premium hotel rate, this was not acceptable. We raised the issue with the front desk.

Four hours later, we had finally been moved to a new room where we could get Internet access. The new room was an upgrade to a suite, and the excessive time to execute the move appeared to be due to management reluctance to do the one thing that would fix the problem (that being an upgraded room, there being no other available rooms with a double bed). Some of the time lost was due to challenges finding a room with a good wi-fi signal, once the upgrade decision had been made.

Management first tried to get us pay for an upgraded room (which we refused), and then tried to get us to accept a lesser room with twin beds (which we don’t do), before finally doing what any decent US hotel would have done in a matter of minutes. This was a bit irksome, but we were patient.

Throughout, the saving grace was a young Thai guy at reception, who worked our problem from beginning to end. He spoke English well, and with a British accent, having lived and studied the language in England for five years. He brought things ’round to a good resolution, and taught us some things about Thailand in the process.

The suite was large and nice. The only thing we didn’t like about it was the carpeting, which is always inferior to wood and tile – particularly in a hotel operation.

So, Laithong Hotel is a pricey hotel, with decent rooms, poor wi-fi, carpeting, and an exceptional English-speaking guy on staff. It’s probably a notch above the Ubon Buri Hotel and Resort, which is another place we stayed in this city.

 Posted by at 1:07 am