Lying Liars and their Stiking Lies. Part II of the DR

I'm going to start this by saying that I went to the Doc in the Box this morning because I couldn't stand the stomach issues I was having still after the trip. I had a fever and swollen internal organs. Diagnosis? Salmonella! I think that's a good preview for the next part in this series.

Our second full day dawned cloudy and drear. We became trapped in the breakfast buffet as it rained monsoonal rains upon us. No matter. We needed to pack up anyway to move to the Villa that day.

My mom had booked two nights in the suites and then 5 nights in the Villa. She paid for all 7 in the Villa but the evil bitch who sold us this trip double dipped and sold us 5 days and someone else 5 days but charged both of us a whole week's worth and overlapped them so she only paid for 10 days. More on her to come.

The night before my mother had arranged for us to move at 4pm so we could enjoy the beach for the day and not have to rush back. But when we got to the reception area they told us we needed to leave our room because they needed it for someone else arriving that day. By then the sun had come out and we were ready for beach. So Ricardo went up and moved our stuff. But while waiting, my mom found out that we could move to the Villa then and have the whole day ahead of us at the beach. So when he came down, we told him the plan and vacated the rooms.

But it turns out that that was a lie. Because when we came down with all our stuff, surprise! The Villa wasn't ready. And also we owed them 20 pesos for a call we'd made to the Trapische Paradise restaurant the night before because they wouldn't give us a reservation at a restaurant and we didn't want to eat at the buffet again. It was 10:30am.

Now, 20 pesos is about 60¢. It's 33 pesos to the dollar. So I handed her a 500 peso bill. But she couldn't make change. But we couldn't check into the villa until we'd settled our bill with them. But they couldn't make change. Finally I found a 100 peso bill. Still, no change. WTF? I was yelling at them. My mother was yelling at them because we'd been tricked into giving up our rooms and there was no villa for us.

Finally they agreed to "transfer" the 60¢ charge to the villas, we got a guagua (bus) to take us to the villas reception. It was now 11:30 am. There they kept us waiting while they answered the phones instead of helping us and took other customers before us for another 1/2 an hour. We were told they were cleaning the villa. We were told there was no villa for us. We were told we'd been upgraded to VIP and then that we weren't. Eventually someone came to take us to the villa.

And then the fun started. It was 1:15. We got to the villa where we proceeded to slide on the tile floors which were wet but not clean. Everyone chose bedrooms. We turned on the fans because it was a million degrees in there. In the bedrooms we cranked down the thermostats. But then we couldn't find the thermostat in the living areas.

At reception we had been told the villa was air conditioned. We had specifically asked, because the day before we found out from a guest member like us that hers was had a/c only in the bedrooms. My mother had insisted we be given a place with a/c throughout because we knew from another person (a VIP) that her villa did have a/c throughout.

So we asked Diaz who had brought us there where the a/c was for the living areas. He said it was on. We hadn't turned it on. How did it get on? The maid turned it on. Where were the vents? He said he didn't know. So we began looking. But there were no vents. Because there was no a/c. Finally we got him to admit there were no vents. But, he told us, if we leave the bedroom doors open it will cool the villa. So we left the doors open and put the fans on. It did not cool the villa. We asked to be moved to another villa one with a/c. But they couldn't do that. All the villas were full. There were members coming and the villas were being saved for them.

We had been told by the absolute bitch whom my mother had rented from that we would be entitled to all the VIP privileges she got. So we were still of the opinion that this might be true. Thus we began the quest for our golf cart, promised by Eileen Bravo whom we'd rented from (DO NOT RENT FROM HER ON EBAY SHE LIES!). But we couldn't have one. There weren't any. We weren't members. My mother pointed out that she'd had surgery the month before and they told us they could probably get us one. But then no, they couldn't because the members were coming and they needed them. There was not one single golf cart to spare. Nor a villa with air conditioning since everything was so so full. At the lowest season in the tropics. With the place at least 1/2 empty. 1/2 empty? they scoffed! Full, full, full.

By then it was like 3:00 and we were starving. We had once again failed to get reservations for a restaurant. Our entire day had been eaten up by the lying merry-go-round. So Diaz called us a guagua. Which didn't come. So we all piled on his golf cart and they took us to Indochine to get something to eat. The food was inedible. The hamburgers had hard bits of bone in them. The pasta tasted funny. We ate almost nothing and then returned to our villa.

And thus began the quest for breakfast. We had been told we would get a hot cooked breakfast in our villa every morning. So when we called, they told us we could only get a continental breakfast. Finally we got a customer service person on the line. We began to ream her out over everything that had happened. She promptly blamed everything on Eileen Bravo. It had become clear that she was a total liar and her ad had been full of total bullshit. But it wasn't like the resort hadn't had their fair share of lies to spread as well.

Between my yelling at Nicola and Ricardo yelling at her, we managed to get some free passes to Ocean World out of them. I told her they needed to be ready for us to pick up in one hour. Of course they weren't. But we got them.

We went back to the villa where Cesar appeared to try and straighten us out. He claimed that eggs, bacon, waffles, these things were part of a continental breakfast. Despite the paper that we'd gotten with what we could order. On that paper it said continental breakfast was rolls, fruit, juice and coffee. But he denied what was written there. Then he told us that we were never told what we'd been told. We'd always been told we were getting a hot breakfast. OMFG!!! Get me out of this fun house!!!!!

That night we went back to the Trapische Paradise where we had a delicious meal.

Tune in tomorrow to find out exactly what a hot breakfast at the Lifestyle Hacienda Resort and Spa is...