This is the hotel we’re scheduled to stay in two days from now. My wife’s friend just found out we’re going and informed us of the conditions there. Apparently, our hotel used to be on a nice beach in Kending but they rebuilt it much closer to the water. Now the beach is almost completely eroded.
I’m devastated because I was really looking forward to this trip. Bascially, there is no beach to speak of.
Tons of nice beaches down there. Just drive a bit south of the town and cross the peninsula at Oluanpi. The one at the Chateau was never very nice. At least you can no longer see their sewage outflow – it used to flow directly into an open cesspit right at the edge of their beach!
Stay away from that place! Do yourself a favor and DON"T stay there. “Cha bu duo” at its very best!
Try somewhere else, like the Caesar Park, Howard Resort… or otherwise some of the smaller hotels, BB’s, “home-stays” before Kenting (from Kaoshiung’s side) or after Kenting proper as you head to the lighthouse/fort.
Whatever you do, don’t stay in the Chateau! IMO, “piss poor” is an understatement!
Could someone forward this to the xenophobes at Le Chateau?
The beack was OK in February - wonder what happened since. They were building the new addition then - money talks in Taiwan.
However, after having read the thread someone posted a link to, I might venture to say that the fuss is overblown.
The beach tends to get carried away after typhoons, and then the sand comes back autumn, winter and spring. If you have a year with no typhoons, then the beach will be very wide - if not, then it will be a rocky disaster. Since the hotel opened, they have seen that cycle back and forth on a nearly yearly basis.
In other words, there are natural cycles in play here, and the building of the hotel is not a major factor, as the important moving of the sand to or from the beack takes place underwater.
An employee actually posted that the closure of Dawan beack was a godsend to the animals living there - especially the crab population. They have a bit more wildlife than they would have if the beack was totally open with water scooters, discarded beach umbrellas, and the huge amounts of waste, the average Taiwanese beach visitor deposits.
I don’t condone the closure of a beach and the building of eyesores next to it. However, the beach is a fair bit cleaner than it would have been (when it’s there, that is), and compared to what you normally see of construction near beaches here, the Chateau looks pleasant.
That said, it was scratched, a bit run down, and the service could have been a fair bit better.
Thanks for the info guys. I leave tomorrow so I’ll report back on how it was. Turns out, we paid up front so we can’t cancel. Bummer but maybe it will turn out well.
We stayed at the Chateau on Da Wan beach as I said in the first post. The beach was exactly as described on the forum that I linked to. Bascially, there was no beach. It was almost totally eroded away. That may not have been a big deal if the Chateau staff hadn’t LIED to us and said the beach was just fine and sent us pictures designed to make it look that way. We even paid extra for a room where we could “walk out onto the beach” which really pissed my wife off.
As for the erosion being totally natural, I just don’t buy it. Xiao wan is only a few miles away and it had almost no erosion that I could tell. Neither did any of the other beaches on the south end of Ping Dong. Da Wan near the Chateau hotel is a disaster. I have a hard time believing that their construction had nothing to do with the erosion.
Even if it is totally natural, though, why on earth would they build a beach resort ona an area that is normally without a beach? It doesn’t make sense.
BTW, I thought the Chateau was fairly nice, especially for Taiwan. The staff was very helpful and responded quickly to all our requests. They get an A for that. The food downstairs was great but the upstairs restaurant was terrible! Just letting anybody who might be thinking of staying there know what it was like.
Even if I had the money, I would refuse to patronize The Chateau just on principle. There are much better hotels in the area… ones who aren’t trying to slap a price tag on nature.
“So I jumped over the fence and yelled at the house,
'Hey, what gives you the right
to build up a fence to keep me out
and to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here, he’d tell you to your face
Man, you’re some kind of sinner.”
I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to ruin the beach.
Also, according to some threads sent by my GF, they would have appeared to have created the “natural fluctations” by using earth moving equipment to get sand over to where the guests are. Note the life jackets - all the sand providing shallow water is gone - so they have to give people life jackets on before letting them out in the water.
I’ve never seen her so angry in my life. After she saw the beach (or lack of it) she marched straight to the office to complain.
I simply could not let my little boy get anywhere near the water because six feet away from where the waves broke on shore was a dropoff of about a foot or more. I was shocked. Literally feet away from the shore, the water would be over your head. You could actually see the dropoff when the waves broke because lots of small rocks were accumulating there. This meant a pretty strong undertoe, as well. NOT cool for swimming and no place at all for kids. My boy was scared out of his gourd to get in the water. I couldn’t blame him.
Fortunately, the Chateau’s many pools were pretty good. Small consolation.
[quote=“Muzha Man”]But what about the rest of the beach? It’s a long beach. Is it all gone or just the part in front of the hotel?
Bastards no matter what the answer. They’re out of the next Lonely Planet for sure.[/quote]
See, that’s the thing. The erosion is all supposed to be natural but the part of Da Wan that is away from the Chateau doesn’t look near as bad as the part near the hotel. That’s another reason why I find it hard to believe that it’s all natural. About Lonely Planet, let’s hope you’re right.
[quote=“netrealist”][quote=“Muzha Man”]But what about the rest of the beach? It’s a long beach. Is it all gone or just the part in front of the hotel?
Bastards no matter what the answer. They’re out of the next Lonely Planet for sure.[/quote]
See, that’s the thing. The erosion is all supposed to be natural but the part of Da Wan that is away from the Chateau doesn’t look near as bad as the part near the hotel. That’s another reason why I find it hard to believe that it’s all natural. About Lonely Planet, let’s hope you’re right.[/quote]
Will start working on the new guide in December. If it’s clear they are causing the problem they won’t get a reference.
I’m not sure. That’s a tough call I guess. The worst damage is right in front of the pool. From the pics above, you can see that the showers there are now hanging in mid-air. Below that, there is a downward slope, sandbags, and then the surf. No beach and a lot of rocks havenow been exposed. The situation isn’t much better in front of the new wing. However, it is better past the drainage point over towards where the town part of KenDing is.
I should note that they have now built another wing that isn’t even open yet. They were still working on it last week. If construction of the last wing led to worse erosion, then I wonder how this wing will affect it too. Yikes.