We had an extremely nice stay at Kollam Ashtamudiat Club Mahindra Resorts
As an ordinary human being I will tell you the defects FIRST.
1) Absolutely no cooking possible - no microwave or equivalent. When they started they made people believe that it is great to cook in your room and microwave ovens were provided. You can’t even make coffee - I don’t consider Nescafe and Bru as coffee. (out of context: can anyone tell me why even in mass production like railway they make instant coffee which is costly and absolutely nowhere near filter coffee. In our house you just can’t enter with instant coffee powder - a siren will go off!)
2) Extremely expensive - Coffee Rs 120 Mineral water Rs 80 plus taxes (I remember a friend saying I can pay only sales tax!) By the way do the members have any choice if CM charges Rs2000 for a cup of coffee except talking about that? One can atleast say labour has become expensive for coffee. But a litre of mineral water is Rs 80 is really something crazy.
3) Taxi provided by CM is costing very high as much twice or more the outside rates. It is my suspicion that somebody makes money in between. I may be wrong (I hope I am). I could engage an a/c Innova at less than half their rate for Tata Indica. Also there is an attempt to stop outside taxis entering. I had to go out and bring.
A few points may be of use for people using CM at Kollam:
9400471081 / 9037374736 Innova a/c owner cum driver Sivaprasad charged me Rs 12 per km for 300 km in a day(6am to 9 pm). Nothing else. So cheap that I felt on my return to Chennai that I should have paid more. He said normally he charges 13 if you do 200-250 km in a day. Maybe you should go out and pick up the taxi half a km outside Mahindra
9946583573 an auto driver lives just next to Mahindra a friendly guy.(Another thing I don’t understand why many places incl CM allows two and four wheelers but not three)
You should do Kollam - Alleppey by a boat (govt tourism dept) 1030-1830. Just Rs 300 - sit on the upper deck! Better return by bus. Traffic may be so mad in the night traffic in a taxi like indica! Club Mahindra office says they have never heard about the govt of tourism running boats! They have their own tours again more expensive.
Club Mahindra should drop at Kollam town in the morning and pick you at Alleppey back home (of course charging).
Guruprasad Hotel - small veg restaurant In Main Road Kollam offering veg snacks and lunch (you should go for lunch before 2 pm). (Less than sales tax cost at CM!)
The resort manager Silju Joseph was very friendly to offer help.
The swimming pool was very good.
Very good food is served. Clean one. Probably they can do better, if the number of dishes is less. Only thing is that light food like idlis and all that is not available in the night. They say nobody likes idlis in the night! I told them to go to Madurai in the evening where one million idlis are sold in the night (My friends used to call me Exaggeration Chakravarthi!) Any help like heating the milk (we wanted double toned) heated etc. was promptly done. Cleaning was very good and prompt. It is very difficult to maintain a floating room and they do it wonderful.
They must have installed pressure pumps (so nice to take a shower with nice pressure/force especially outside the pool).
I am told by the manager that they will provide microwave oven shortly (I was mentally thanking Thomas Cook taking over Sterling!)
It was a great stay in the floating room (booking four months in advance)! Five of us planned and only two could go (73 years and 69 years!)