Happy Life Village 4*

if you are looking for a sparkling luxury 5 stars - stay away. you will be annoyed by the somewhat run down furniture and the state of towels and linen. but if you want a simple relaxing holiday - its your choice.

the hotel is in isolated (but they do have shuttle buses if you feel like visiting Dahab) and a very picturesque location by the huge mountain. the territory is very green with lots of flowers. the riffs are full of all kings of fish, sea urchins and colorful corals. just perfect for snorkeling. beach is big, sunbeds are more or less covered from the wind. there is stretching at the beach every morning and you can learn some of the easy and most needed phrases in Arabic afterwards (thanks Nero).

rooms and outside of the buildings seem freshly painted. rooms are quite spacious, but only tween options are available. so we had to move the beds together which nevertheless did not mar the comfortless of the mattresses.

at the time of our stay the hotel had only about 20 guests, so most of it was shut down. but if we wanted something (like water slides) we just had to ask for it to be open/turned on.

as for the entertainment, there was disco at the beach bar and once we went to a Egyptian show. there is a small gym and a couple of pool and table tennis tables. oh, and some areas for kinds of course. we also enjoyed the walks along the beach to both sides of the hotel. there are wild date palm trees and sometimes unattended camels to take pictures with :-)

HUGE thanks to the whole restaurant team. they really made us feel special and as if we were a long term friends. on my birthday I got flowers for every meal from them ;-) a small tip - ask for a medium cooked meat.

HUGE dislike to the spa team. Jaime and Doha (I hope the names are spelled correctly) give awesome massages and they deserve every praise. everything else is not so good. "spa" is simply a rip off. so called hammam has freezing cold stone bench instead of a warm table. shower was the temperature of outside pool (and they are not heated) and so was jacuzzi (which of course i did not go to). despite my complains i was only offered to go in the sauna one more time to warm up. "we told the reception that the heater does not work". why not tell me before i pay, huh? so, out of "Cleopatra full body treatment" i got:

- 5 min in the sauna (till i got bored);

- 5-10 min in the "hammam" with a cold shower to wash the soap of;

- 10-15 min under a towel in a cold room "relaxing" in coconut chips with some "magic" facial mask (all that time stuff was going in and out of the room, because its like a corridor) and a cold shower again to wash it all off;

- 5 minutes in the same room waiting for the tea to be made (because i did not go in the freezing jacuzzi);

- an hour of AMAZING massage from Doha (should have just gone for it from the beginning!)

also, if you go for a massage - STAY AWAY from short skinny guy (name starts with B, i think). he is a lousy masseur and has SERIOUSLY INAPPROPRIATE behavior (if you read this, jerk, i didn't say anything just because i didn't want my husband to start a fight right there. but i will post about you on as many web sites as i can and i hope the hotel management reads this)

overall we would like to come to this hotel again for its friendly and quiet atmosphere and to say hi to all our new friends