We visited the homestay and it felt really homely.
However, there are some shortcomings which i personally don’t feel very pleasant about.
We reached there earlier than the supposedly check-in time as the flight was a redeye flight, we were told to wait. During waiting, we were told to fill up the visitor form but some of our phones can’t do the submission due to unreceived OTP.
Also, this is a residential apartment so Taobao items are not kept at front desk. It’s delivered to nearby pickup point which can be across the street or at the edge of the area.
Before entering the residential building, security guard will request for your details, once again. And every time you enter you have to get access from security. This is something that is very tedious, especially when the security swapped shift.
The house, although homely, was very humid and stale. There was supposedly an aircon in the living room but was removed. Visiting in summer was a torment. Unit is electrical saving in the sense that you have to activate the button behind the main door everytime you open and close the door. If you dont, it will deactivate the electrical supply.
With that said, you have to return to a extremely hot and humid unit every single day.
Kitchen was dirty, unkept. Toilets have foul smell of drainage, sewer flies were observed as well. Common toilet right beside the main door appeared to be translucent, which got the user getting paranoid over the silhouette when showering, especially in the night.
Housekeeping wasnt done for our 3 nights stay.
We came back to untidy room and was told that cleaner had knocked off despite uncompleted jobs.
When asked for essentials like toilet rolls and mineral water, it was the cleaner aunty who delivered, while taking her time and nagging at our request for delivery.
We paid for extension because our return flight was late, but cleaner aunty came in even before our agreed time. Just so that she can knock off on time after cleaning the unit.
I liked most of my stay here. It was mostly clean except the marble floors were always sticky, the bathroom was good, the bed was comfortable. The location is right next to Chengxi Station but realistically you should be Didi-ing everywhere anyway, and it's located on top of a huge mall Paradise Walk.
Major negatives:
1. Noisy room. Kept hearing furniture scraping from upstairs. Can hear someone else dropping a bottle somewhere. Walls made of paper.
2. 15th floor unit was a split unit, loft area and downstairs area, and mine was the upstairs loft. I opened the door to see an immediate flight of 15 or 16 steps in front of me to drag a 25 kg luggage bag up.
3. No front desk and instructions were not sent to me through Trip to tell me how to check in. Went to 17th floor unit mentioned in listing and it was a linen room with a cleaning lady as clueless as I was. She called someone and I got added to a support WeChat group with 8 staff members who then let me in, but I never saw them. They also said they'd let me know when checkin was ready, and never did. I had to ask them 2 hours after check in time before they remembered about me.
4. Luggage drop off was also there, and by the end of the day many more people had dropped their luggage there. Problem is this is actually a public, if concealed, hallway, with many ******* drivers and similar walking by as they delivered food. Not secure at all.
5. Finally, and most importantly, they gave my room's digital password to another girl who tried to get in on my final evening there, only to be confused as to why the door was locked. If I hadn't happened to come home first, she would have gotten in and could have taken all my stuff. They never commented on this.