My husband and I were excited to book our room at the Sawah Sunrise B&B for our time in Ubud last fall. The pictures on the Web site looked nice, and we thought it would be a restful place to spend our days at the beginning of our trip to Bali. Boy, were we wrong!
To start, we were promptly picked up at the airport by the drive, Mr. Suma. One check in the positive column. We anticipated that he would be giving us information about the island, Ubud or even the hotel on the hour-plus drive to the B&B. Didn't happen. Instead, he remained silent for most of the drive, until we neared the B&B and he inquired about our plans for the week, then offered to act as our driver. Feeling cornered, we agreed to let him drive us somewhere the following afternoon, but we weren't thrilled at the prospect.
Once we arrived at our room and started to get settled, we noticed the dirt all over the floor, spiderwebs throughout the bathroom and general dinginess of the room. There was what appeared to be mosquito netting around the bed, but because it was solid fabric and not an actual net, we couldn't put it down around the bed unless we wanted absolutely no airflow. Additionally, because there were no screens on the windows, we really needed a net! Instead we were forced to bug spray ourselves from head to foot each night before bed and hope not to get overly bitten.
During our four nights at Sawah Sunrise, there were other unpleasantries. For example, the noise. We came expecting the sound of roosters crowing; what we didn't expect were the sounds of wild dogs barking and fighting all night long. For some people, that may be something that can be easily slept through; for us, it was not. Another unfortunate aspect of this hotel is the walls, which are paper thin. In addition to the ruckus made by the animals, we heard every noise made by our neighbors (and, we assume, they heard ours), including toilets flushing and water running in the sink. (Speaking of the sink -- although the water in Bali is not potable for Westerners, the hotel provides only one bottle of water on check-in, so you'll have to lug it back from a gas station every day. Not a huge deal, but those little things add up.)
In keeping with the untidy appearance of the room when we arrived, the room was minimally cleaned throughout our stay. In fact, one afternoon we returned to our room and needed to use a washcloth to wipe the dust off our faces and arms before heading out to dinner. We hung it near the door to be collected and exchanged, and it remained there for the duration of our stay. Apparently no one looked too hard at the room when "cleaning" it. There were also constant trails of ants in the room, which served as a general nuisance and made us reluctant to store any food to take with us on outings in the room.
The last disappointment about this hotel was the pressure we felt by the staff driver, Mr. Suma. On two occasions he showed up on our porch while we were eating breakfast (early in the morning -- before 8:30) and loitered, talking with us about our plans and clearly hoping we would ask him to drive us. It's really unpleasant to spend your relaxing breakfast time making small talk with a virtual stranger, especially on multiple mornings.
This is a hotel I would stay far away from. It's cheap, but I think it's better to pay a bit more for something more centrally located (you walk down a long dirt path to get here, and it's about 15 minutes from town) and with better service. Spend your money elsewhere!