Hotel Cassia a Bintan

1. Well-equipped apartment. Safe, ironing equipment, umbrella, beach bag, crockery, cutleries, pot and pan and best of all – extremely comfortable bed and pillows and new air-conditioners! 2. Clean and modern interior. A few small flying insects that got into the room (inevitable due to the surrounding garden/forests and opening of doors) but thankfully, didn’t encounter any mosquitoes or ants in the apartment – what a relief! Fogging in the common areas is done twice a week – Tues and Thur late nights. Didn’t detect any unpleasant drainage smell in the toilet/shower so I’m perfectly happy with my assigned Queen Suite apartment! 3. Balcony views: (i) Block 1 is beach front apartments with full sea view (ii) Block 2 is made up of two sections: one section faces the Garden and the other section faces the Car-park (iii) Blocks 3 and 4 have either (i) Garden view - with partial sea view on highest floor) OR, (ii) Forest view – with partial sea view too on highest floor). (iv) Block 5 on the top floors have distant sea view (this block is on a slope and furthest from the reception and pool) 4. Friendly staff. My requests were attended to swiftly. 5. Private beach (shared among the 3 resorts there) is reasonably clean with fairly clear sea (there’re jelly fish warning signages). 6. Pool at Cassia is smaller but newer and cleaner than at Angsana. A new pool bar construction is currently being carried out in front of Cassia’s pool and the hoarding blocks the beautiful sea view from the infinity pool until mid Nov – what a pity! 7. Adequate breakfast spread but houseflies and birds were spotted in the restaurant – made me worry about the hygiene level 8. Various English movie channels but screen resolution was poor and images often lagged for a few seconds – makes the movie watching experience tiresome and annoying. Only the International news and Singapore channels did not suffer from lags/poor image quality 9. Some of the building and lift direction signs in the different apartment blocks are puzzling and confusing – the signs are probably very clear ONLY to the people who planned/designed them - certainly NOT easily understood by foreign guests! You need to get into the correct lifts in different buildings to reach the blocks furthest from the reception (to avoid climbing any stairs or slopes eg blocks 4 and 5). I only figured out the various sheltered linkways/correct lifts after a few trial and errors, lol! 10. Credit card is needed for room deposit during check in even if room cost was already paid in advance during online booking: 4 Million Indonesian Rupiah per apartment per night