Whats On Chiang Mai

We have stay at a number of places based on reviews on Trip Advisor in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai.  In almost every case, the ratings and reviews on Trip Advisor did not resemble the actual property.     In addition, when we submit accurate, factual reviews to Trip Advisor, they are not published.

Trip Advisor is simply a fraud.   Most of the reviews are fraudulent designed by property owners to boost their ratings.    The ratings have become so useless because of this fraud, that Trip Advisor should be classified as a fraudulent web site.   You cannot trust anything you read there.

Making matters worse, property owners and managers manipulate Trip Advisor as a part of their normal business operations, working hard to inflate their ratings by posting fraudulent reviews and encouraging their friends and employees to do the same.

Recently we stayed at two properties in Chiang Mai where the mattresses were so bad, worse than any we have seen.   When I complained to the manager of the Sira Boutique Hotel, his first reply was “we are highly rated on Trip Advisor.”   He seemed to imply that my complaint was not valid because of his Trip Advisor ratings.   Curious, I looked at all the Sira Boutique Hotel ratings and found that almost all of them were written by “people” who had created an account for the purpose of posting only one review.  This is a certain indicator of review fraud.

When I posted out to Trip Advisor their review fraud I was surprised to see that instead of acting on my complaint of review fraud, they simply deleted my factual reviews.    The simple fact of the matter is that Trip Advisor is a fraud.  Be very careful when you pick a Chiang Mai hotel or resort based on reviews on Trip Advisor.

Today we took a visit to Sinativa Spa, 22/1 Nimmanhaemin Road, Soi 9, T. Suthep   A. Muang, Chiangmai, Thailand 50200, Tel. 053 217 928, Mobile : 086 659 2545. to try their herbal steam treatment.  Unfortunately, this spa was simply dirty and unclean. We found the environment not healthy. 

As we all know, mold is a very bad for the body, especially when we breath it in steam.  The bath towels were moldy.  I think the spa employess wash them and dry them outside in the humid air because each bath towel I used smelled of mold.

That alone is bad, but the herbal steam room was also very moldy.   In fact, the thermometer on the wall was covered in fresh moldy slime.  I could feel the mold on the walls.   The staff at Sinative boasts of more than 15 herbs in their Thai herbal steam, but we found 15 herbs in the steam mixed with dangerous mold spores.

There are other problems with the Sinative Spa Club, but we don’t want to go into any further details because the mold problem was bad enough.  I could not believe a spa is managed or owned by anyone who does not keep their spa clean and free of slimy mold.