Last Updated on August 30, 2018 by PowersToTravel
I’m on the fence as to how I feel about the Lodge.
It is set in a beautiful location on the side of a small river, and offers a swimming pool, an open-air dining pavilion and separate little cottages for each couple. The private cottages made of wood and bamboo perch on stilts arrayed around a number of water features: a lily pond, the river, other streams. The Lodge appears to have grown to become one with the jungle. You could easily get lost strolling around the jungle parkland, that is if you didn’t fall from one of the many swinging bridges! Visually, the resort was the stuff dreams are made of.
The interiors were as atmospheric as the exteriors. Antique furniture filled the cottage; bamboo walls accented the low-lit bedroom; uniquely tiled bathrooms with skylights brought the jungle in, in a civilized way.
Functionally, however, the Lodge fell short. The disappointment started with dinner. Hungry, we arrived early to the dining pavilion. They seated us at a private table for two. It became quickly apparent to us from the huge dining tables that almost all of the other guests at the lodge had arrived as a part of a group tour. The staff rushed to and fro preparing huge buffet tables, but as we waited and waited, the bewitching hour just never arrived. We tried to flag staff to ask about dinner, and no one seemed to want to pay attention to our little table.
We asked ourselves if we wanted the buffet, as so much of it was a salad bar, which I couldn’t partake of, due to my sensitive digestion. In addition, we could see that the staff had filled the serving pots with food, and the food just sat there as time passed. The other guests did not arrive, and I began to be concerned about the food’s freshness. Several of my past digestive failures coincided with buffet meals, and I am now very suspicious of them.
Finally a staff member let us know that we could order from the menu. Ah, finally some forward progress with which I could be comfortable. While we waited for the personal meals to be prepared, the hoards arrived at once.
Instead of enjoying a lovely quiet meal in a candlelight jungle pavilion, we ate our meal in the company of tens and tens of tour bus patrons, all of them chattering noisily. Rising together in large herds, like elephants, they scoured the buffet bar next to which we had been seated.
We sadly returned to our little Lanna house. Did I mention that the little houses were built in the “Lanna” style, particular to Northern Thailand? If you’ll wait a sec, I’ll go look up what Lanna means, because for the life of me I can’t remember what our guide taught us. I’ll check Wikipedia. Ah, the Lanna Kingdom existed in Northern Thailand from the 13th to 18th centuries, as a very separate culture from the Bangkok area. Other sources mention the A-frame style architecture with curved sloping roofs. I think we’ll see more of it in Chiang Mai.
We settled in to our little cottage and the functional flaws crept out of the jungle, like mosquitos. You can see in the picture that this cottage was built with two twin beds, and they implemented the requested double by pulling out the beds and pushing them together IN FRONT of the built-in night stand. As you can imagine, a restless night followed. I alternated between clinging to my mattress as my bed crept around the floor all night, and pursuing my pillow as it dove off, in search of its headboard.
The dawn brought a lovely light into the room, and we relaxed a bit on the veranda, overlooking the lily pond and its resident ducks. The nightmares of the night slowly faded.
But breakfast was no more successful than dinner. Somehow our breakfast timing, which was orchestrated by our guide’s announced pickup time, followed the breakfast time of the hoards. We arrived to a private, picture-perfect dining pavilion overlooking the river, but the breakfast buffet itself was denuded. We sadly picked at our bits of cold food and wondered how this so very romantic location hadn’t lived up to its promise.
We followed up the meal with my leaving my purse behind, along with our passports. It’s not as if we got on the road without it, but after mad dashes throughout the complex (it’s quite a large place), we finally located my purse intact and were ready to go.
We gratefully welcomed Bom and Lucky and were happy to be on our way.
Related Links
Lampang River Lodge – if you like twin beds and buffet meals, this may be the place for you. Hmmm, as I check out their website a picture shows an excellent king-sized bed in a perfectly functional cottage. Wonder why we didn’t get that one?
