Our family with two kids visited Hua Hin for the long Macha Buddha weekend. The booking service offered us Baan Talay Dao as a substitute for our first pick, and we do not regret choosing it. The peak weekend made the price a bit high, but I feel the hotel would be quite good value off-season. In any case, all Hua Hin hotels were having higher prices due to the long weekend and we considered being right on the beach to be worth something.

Finding the hotel was not difficult based on the map information available on the Internet. Driving down from Bangkok on road #4 there were even a couple of large guide signs, which seemed to be a quite common practice for Hua Hin hotels. The entrance to Baan Talay Dao is right after the much larger Wora Bura resort. The hotel is some 150 metres from the street (Hua Hin Soi 87) so traffic noise is not an issue, and the soi is not a very busy one, anyway.

The hotel is quite small (30 rooms) and set in a quite nice garden with shading trees and fish ponds. It is not on the main Hua Hin beach, but near the southern end of the Takiab beach with a nice view of Kao Takiab. This is not necessarily a disadvantage: our friends reported that the Hua Hin beach was littered with garbage and dead fish, while the beach around the resort was quite clean. There were almost none beach vendors, although there were enough enteprising ones so that we could catch a banana boat ride and horse rides for the kids right at the resort without having to go looking for one. Thai massage was also available on the beach a few hundred metres to the north of our resort.

The slope of the beach is very gradual which keeps the noisy and possibly reckless jet ski riders quite far away, which is quite nice when you are looking after small children. The sand is quite nice and fine without stones, so you are actually better off walking without any shoes. The main disadvantage of the beach at the resort is that it did not exist in the morning when the tide was high; by evening the strip of sand extends about a hundred metres to the sea, though. This was no real problem, since by walking some 200 metres north we were able to access the sandy strip of beach at the neighboring resort. Good enough for the kids to build sand castles, but you must go much farther away if you absolutely need to tan yourself on a bed of dry sand. The water seemed to be clean enough, although not crystal clear. I believe the reason to be the shallow sandy beach and the fairly strong wind from the sea which churns up the water.

Hua Hin beaches appear to be troubled with stinging jellyfish. The hotel has a warning sign with three alert levels. During our stay it was at "yellow", and I actually saw three smallish jellyfish during the two afternoons the kids spent frolicking in the sea. Our friends reported and photographed a 2-feet one on the Hua Hin beach. The risk is real, since the daughter of one of the other hotel guests was stung, fortunately mildly, on her arm.

We stayed in a first-floor studio room which was spacious enough with a double bed and a settee which converted into an extra bed for our 7-year child. The bathroom was even excessively large considering the small space allocated for the shower cubicle. Plenty of hot water in the shower and wash basin. The bath room had the typical amenities with soap, shampoo and shower cap. Overall, the room was as advertised on the Sawadee.com web site. The channel selection on the cable TV was reasonable with three kids channels, the V music channel and BBC news, but the high end ones like HBO or MTV were missing. Quite a number of single non-English channels, too: Italian, Hindi, etc. However, as positive surprises even the studio room provided an electric kettle (good for preparing our baby's milk formula) and there was an in-room safe that was large enough for a laptop computer and was even attached to the wall.
At check-in you can also get a password for the in-room Wi-Fi which worked just fine. (Alternatively, guests can use a single computer in the lobby.)

The air conditioning was a bit noisy, and my wife complained about an occasional smell of excrement. (I noticed it but thought it was from the remains in our kid's diapers that we had dumped into the bathroom bin.) The minibar was quite limited and we did not use it apart from the provided two complimentary bottles of water - these were not restocked during our 2-night stay so it may be worthwhile to get your own from the nearby 7/11. The provided hairdryer was quite small and rather underpowered for dealing with long hair. Overall, I would classify the room as a three-star one.

The infinity pool with a small jacuzzi section matched the expectation created by the website images. It would have been uncomfortably small for swimming for excercise, but it was plenty large for the kids to enjoy themselves. The sundeck had 30 chairs which might be too few for the highest season but during this time I never saw all of them occupied.

The single restaurant was serving breakfast 7-10am. It was not large but adequate for the small number of rooms - no need to wait for a table. The variety of dishes in the breakfast buffet was not lavish, but was adequate. They offered two kinds of juice, milk and water. Soy milk was available the first morning, but not on the second one. An omelet station provided also waffles. The buffet had a couple of changing Western dishes, a couple of changing Thai dishes, salad, yogurths, corn flakes, toast, full-corn bread, croissants, some different kinds of cheeses and sausages, salad, fruit, decent coffee, etc. My wife's biggest complaint was that there were no signs labelling the dishes, which was a hassle due to her dietary restrictions; I was quite happy myself. We used the restaurant mostly for breakfast. We ordered once Thai food as room service - it was good, reasonably priced and was delivered quickly enough. The milkshakes that we had at the restaurant were reasonably priced, too.

Check-in and check-out were painless. However, we had a voucher for the stay and paid cash for the additional expenses. Overall, the staff was quite friendly and helpful. For example, the first evening we missed the 6pm free shuttle van to downtown, but when we were starting out at 6:30pm the staff offered to drop us off near the Hilton for free. They also were able to organize babysitting service at 300 baht/hour although that is not listed as one of the official hotel services. However, this might not have been possible if we had not given a day's notice.

The resort is not exacly next to Hua Hin downtown and the night spots - walking there is not a good option. The resort provides a free one-way shuttle service once in the morning and once in the evening. We had to use the local taxis and tuk-tuks at the somewhat extortionate standard 150-baht flat rate. We never had the time to try and find out if the local bus service really worked as claimed by other reviews. The hotel rents out motorbikes at 300 baht per day, which is definitely a good option if you dare to ride yourself and need to make more than one return trip to the downtown per day. However, there is a 7/11 and a pharmacy almost opposite to the entrance of the hotel in case you need to restock supplies. The soi has also some small restaurants and bars a few hundred metres north of the hotel, so walking to those would be an option if you do not want to incur the cost of going downtown. The time should not be an issue, since the ride to the Hilton or Soi Bintabaht is about ten minutes once you have caught a ride in front of the hotel.

Overall, we would consider using this hotel if we visit Hua Hin again.