Nestling right in the heart of Serendipity beach with a range of rooms perched high up on the way leading to the sea is Coasters Hotel. Although it is a total pain navigating the steep steps to your room (and that's coming from me, never mind my Uncle Bill with his walking stick) but the view from your balcony is rewarding in the end. It perhaps would have been nice of them to advise either via email or on the website that access for the elderly or infirm would be difficult - but we coped with it anyway.

There is no doubt you are right in the thick of things here which is good. All the bars and eating places are positioned on the beach which just makes it a few minutes walk from the action. One of the highlights of the place is Wan the Thai masseuse who will come to your room and give you a great massage from 7usd.

• Location - 4/5, great for all the bars and restaurants and its right on the beach. Only the hard trek to the rooms make it slightly inconvenient but this gives you the great view of the beach.
• Cleanliness - 2/5, probably the worse part of the hotel. The room was only cleaned once even though we stayed there for 7 nights. Allegedly you could have you rooms cleaned anytime you wanted but you just had to hand your key in to them for it to be done....but I missed that briefing and so in waiting for them to come and clean, it never got done. Perhaps they should explain this better to everyone who arrives. The towels always smelled musty and the sheets bearly covered the well worn mattresses which weren't a pretty sight. However the communal areas were kept clean ie the bar and bar toilet which was good.

• Room - 3/5 a decent score for the type of room we had. Me and Lesh went rustic as our budget is not that flush. The room is a fabulous bungalow on stilts so the view from the balcony was amazing. However it was back to basics with only fan (which is ok for us we are not bothered about aircon) but there was no hot water and for 20usd a night I think it was expensive for what little we had. My Mum and Aunty Irene had more expensive rooms that cost 35usd which had aircon and hot water but there was no wardrobe or drawers (which really upset Aunty Irene as she really wanted to finally unpack) and there were no safes in the room which are basic things you would expect for that price.
• Food - breakfast 3/5, dinner 4/5. I only ate breakfast there once and I hated it but the others ate theirs and enjoyed it the we did tend to go next door for breakfast for the week we were there. The lunch / dinner menu is small but very nice. I would highly recommend the tom yam soup (with prawns only for me and Lesh) very spicy and tasty and the prawn curry was delicious, though adding some of the potent fresh cut chilies really makes it 100% better!
• Service - 4/5 I am going to be generous as the Northern hospitality was good. The bar staff were always very friendly and although the chef was a tad forgetful and would either forget whole meals or any changes that you asked to a meal - on the whole the service was good. Only the Aussie (?) partner was a bit of a grump, preferring to smoke his cigarettes and huffing and puffing if you interrupted his fag time with a request like can I have my stuff out the safe...

Overall we did enjoy our time at Coasters but they do have areas in which they can improve on to warrant the cost bracket they are in.