Our third of likely five staycations this year. Even though in the last few weeks, there has been an increasing number of reciprocal travel lane arrangements becoming available here, we’ve pretty much decided still that for the rest of this year, we won’t travel out of the country. That means we’ll still make do with short staycations for the rest of this year.
This third one – at Ramada by Wyndam Singapore at Zhongshan Park – and what a mouthful that name is, was a relative sort of spur of the moment stay, in that the missus had a pile of marking to complete, so we opted to book a place to get away from the kids for a weekend. Sure, we could have saved ourselves a bit of money and stayed at home to do the same work, but the reported weekend rate was pretty good, so why not.:)
We stayed for a single evening, and our comments!
The hotel is fairly tall – for the area – at 17 guest floor rooms, and is right beside Zhongshan Mall. Both buildings aren’t pristine new, but they look like they were built in the last 5-6 years. The mall itself is quite small: just two floors, with the upper floor occupied entirely by Fairprice Finest, and the first floor comprising a number of eateries, including Thai Express, ToastBox, McDonald’s, a foodcourt, Starbucks (the entrance to it is on the outside), and a few other less well-known ones, including Stackz (that served pancakes and crepes), and another Thai restaurant.
Check-in took a while though, possibly in part because we’d declined to provide personal (i.e. confidential) details earlier on through email, and also – according to the hotel receptionist checking us in – that the hotel was also fully booked, and she required a bit more time to find us a suitable room. The hotel did look like it was also a hotel that was partially used for persons on quarantine order and the like.
We were hosted in a room on the 15th level. The room was of good-sized with a working table and bay window seating on the window-side of the room, and what a gorgeous view of Balestier Road it afforded. On the left side, we could also get a good view of Toa Payoh Town park and the precinct hub behind it too.
The room also had a small mini-fridge – but nothing inside it aside from a few additional bottles of mineral water – and the usual amenities, including standing shower, and safety deposit box. The shower stall offers those small little conditioner/shampoo and shower gel tubes, so if you’re one of those who use a lot when you bathe, you’d want to bring your own or ask for more when you run out. The long side of the room is also where what looks like a 42″ TV is mounted in the room’s feature wall. TV channels were largely of the cable TV variety and nothing special, and not offered in full-HD, so if you need to watch Netflix, bring along your own equipment. The bed was comfortable, and has four pillows – an additional one was in a bag in the room wardrobe.
In-room WIFI was OK, and we had no difficulties connecting our half-dozen mobile devices to it. Room also seemed well insulated from sound, and we didn’t hear – throughout the stay, and we stayed-in for most of it – any noise along the corridor or from adjacent rooms.
The hotel shares a car park with Zhongshall mall, and lots were easy to find. Very nicely too, the hotel offers a single exit parking coupon for each day of your stay, so you get two coupons for even just a single night stay. That’s not something we take for granted, as several other properties we’ve been to would only provide one for each night.
Mindful of the pretty good rates at this hotel, I do have just one bit that was a little less agreeable: and that was the collection of the $50 deposit for incidentals. Most hotels we’ve stayed here did not ask for that – Ramada did. Oh well.
In all, we were happy with this property, with the highlights being the convenience of having Zhongshan mall right beside it, and room was of good size, clean and comfortable.
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