Koh Kood has continual water problems as there is no consolidated water storage on the island. Each village has it’s own supply. We are in Village 2 and our water comes from underground and can often be a little red and smell of sulphur. The high sulphur content is supposedly very good if you have cuts or injuries but when you turn on the tap it initially smells unpleasant.
We are very worried about uncontrolled development on the island with no efforts to ensure a water supply. PLEASE SAVE WATER. This year there is meant to be a giant El Niño effect and severe water shortages worldwide.
There can be electricity cut outs. The electricity comes from a cable from the mainland so it can have trouble at times. Usually it is restored after a little while.
Happy Days Guesthouse is part of Paradise Divers and we encourage anyone to talk to us about diving. The dive shop does make a noise filling tanks at times, so please be patient. The machines are usually only turned on for a short time and never at night or early morning. If it annoys you, at least the beach across the road is amazing.
We do not provide daily room cleaning but will clean if requested. We are always trying to save water and we never make any claim to be a resort. If you really need facilities like daily cleaning our hotels are probably not the best place for your stay. For guests staying for a while we ask them to send us after a couple of days to organize cleaning. We do ask you to pack up the room little before staff come to clean.
There are plenty of pans and brooms around the place for the self sufficient guests.
If you leave your rubbish bin outside your room in the morning we will empty it. If we miss it please WhatsApp us.
Most rooms have fridges except for Happy Days. In the guesthouse we could not work out a convenient place to fit them, so we have a communal fridge on the ground floor at the bottom the stairs. Please clean out your unused food before you leave, or bring it to us at the restaurant and we will give it away.
There is an outdoor shower at the side of the blue room in Happy Days garden, outside room 4 of Hill Station, and there is a tap outside room 3 Chor Chaba. We hope everybody uses them to avoid having sand in their rooms.
We do not offer bottled water each day but we have a water cooler in the restaurant. We thought it was fair that we supply water and ask everybody to donate 5 or 10 baht to charity when they fill their bottles. Our guests support the temples on Koh Kood or sometimes a member of the local community is unwell or passes away.Donations go for funeral expenses or hospital stays. Last year we desexed a number of local cats as the cat population seems to be getting out control and the locals don’t want to pay for desexing.
Most rooms do not have kettles for tea and coffee but if you need you can get hot water and cup from the restaurant. We ask you make a donation at our water cooler in return. If you want hot water late at night try the pizza shop or the shop across the road or ask us. I can tell you how to turn on the hot section of the water cooler. I used to leave it on but it didn’t seem to get much use so now I turn it off.
We realize Koh Kood is an expensive place and we want to help our guests. We try and provide value meals and hopefully give big serves, depending on the meal. If you can’t eat it your whole meal we can give you a container for takeaway. If guests want instant noodles they can get hot water and bowl at the restaurant. If you buy fruit,(fruit shop just up the road), we will give you a plate and a knife to cut it. Our menu has rice or rice and egg so if you want to buy a tin of fish or something to add to it you are welcome.
The restaurant opens for breakfast at 7.30 am and sometimes earlier as people start leaving early. We are often short staffed, and primarily an accommodation business, but this year we hope to open our restaurant and bar later. We do have a lounge area which has a piano and I am working on getting a guitar if people want to play music. There is international sport on the tv (dependent on internet buffering) and board games.
The Chor Chaba Restaurant area (not the restaurant) is open 24 hours. We encourage guests to use it anytime. If the lights are off just come in and turn on a light and a fan, and turn them off when you leave. There are board games and wifi. We prefer you use this area as we encourage people to enjoy the accommodation areas quietly. If our bar is closed Pornthip Pizza usually is open late to buy drinks.
We love the pool table but it can cause us difficulties. We used to provide free pool but people would come in from outside, and buy a bottle of water and play pool for free. We did not think that is fair so we have introduced a charge of 20 baht per game(loser pays). It is an honesty system but to encourage people to pay and make it fair to our guests who already pay for rooms, we will donate 50% of proceeds to charity.
We can not leave the pool table open when staff are not present so usually last game is at 9.30 pm. We do not have a licence for late night and if the police come to check we will have issues. The other problem is that people who are not guests or local Thai people may come in and take over the table. We find there is a loud party with lots of people we don’t know, gambling and drinking. We do have cameras and we live just behind the restaurant.
We support Wat Ao Phrao and each morning the monks from the temple come to Pornthip Pizza across the road for the traditional “Tam Boon” blessing. It is usually between 6.20 and 6.45 but can sometimes be later or earlier. Guests are most welcome to attend and if you go to Tam Boon, Wai Wai from the Pizza Shop will make you welcome and help you. It is traditional to give some cake or drink or money as a donation. It is a long way from Ao Phrao so the monks come in a car each morning.
We prefer to hear about any problems you have in person and not by booking.com or google reviews. Please tell us or even better, we try to be responsive on whatsapps so, send us. We live on the premises so are always there to help anytime.