The Reef Cottage is a nice house in a great location and has many amenities for guests. For nature lovers, there is much to see in the immediate area (though birds and neighbors are loud and active at all hours so light sleepers may find this difficult). Unfortunately, despite the many positives this house has, we ended up leaving a day early because our communication and interactions with the owner, Mei, were so unpleasant, and at times insulting, that we no longer felt welcome. Behind an exterior of pleasantry, we encountered a rigid, very particular, and compulsive person. One of her compulsions is a detailed and highly unusual cleaning and pest management regime: a key feature of which requires guests to store their raw food wastes and rubbish in the refrigerator and freezer next to their food. We did our best to adopt this bizarre and unsanitary system. She tries to justify this as essential in the Wet Tropics, yet we have never seen or heard of such practice. We, ourselves, live in the tropics and have rented multiple houses in the tropics and never seen refrigerated rubbish stored with food. The house is advertised for kids (and we were thankful for touches such as children’s movies and books and a small activity table), yet we were admonished for moving delicate and fragile display items in order to protect the house during our stay. We cleaned daily to meet her expectations. We were scolded inaccurately for ‘not supervising our child adequately’, and sent multiple messages while out during the day letting us know the replacement cost for any items not returned in original condition. In the night, our very young son accidentally broke a lamp when trying to turn it on in the darkness. We were happy to replace the lamp, of course, but what ensued was a terrible chain of communication. She claimed the lamps were “vintage”, but they were not (the label has a manufacture date of 2007 in China), and it became worse from there. Every 5 days, the house is serviced, but we realized she uses this opportunity to conduct inspections. She also required a full, in-person inspection on check-out (to which she acknowledged everything was in order because we cared for her home as if it were our own). We have rented many, many AirBnBs all over the world with wonderful experiences, and have never encountered such unfriendly treatment. Ultimately, she doesn’t trust her guests and this led to feeling extremely unwelcome – possibly the worst outcome a guest can expect on a vacation.
Long replies on both reviews.
David