Welcome to Lotus Desaru... a.k.a CREEPYVILLE
So last week I and a bunch of my colleagues were tucked away for work in the southern part of Malaysia, at a little town called Kota Tinggi. We were there to audit a client for a whole week, and as is usual with audits in far distance places, our client decides were to put us up for the week. Usually to save cost, they put us up is a little hotel where the rooms are a bit claustrophobic, unless it's a big client with money, then we get a bit of a classier hotel.
This week, we got booked into a rather interesting place, which isn't a hotel per se, but more like a family resort. The place is called Lotus Desaru.... and it's a pretty cool looking place with interesting building designed like castles.
There are at at least four huge block which almost look like apartments, on the outside AND inside (room pics coming later).
The place is also right next to the beach, and has boats, kayaks, a volleyball area by the beach, and even an indoor water theme park. All of which I didn't have time to try out coz' we were too busy WERK-ing. :(
Here's the restaurant where we have our breakfast with a nice view of the beach.
Here's the place where they keep the boats and stuff...
And the indoor water theme park. Weee!
All in all looks like a pretty neat place huh? Well, yes.... for a day trip.
But at NIGHT.... it's a whole different story altogether. The chirpy little getaway turns into practically THE creepiest place I've ever stayed in.
Here's another view of the room blocks in the daytime. The end of this road is the hotel lobby, where my room is close to, and it takes at least 5 minutes to walk down this road to the restaurant, which is behind me in this pic below.
Here's the same place at NIGHT. As you can see, the hotel management did not invest much in lighting. Imagine having to walk up the same long 5 minute path. At night. Alone.
Ok well, maybe that's not too bad. So let's go a bit closer to the rooms... to the hallways. As seen from earlier photos, there are many huge long blocks with 5 floors each, and though you can't really in the pic below, the hallways are really long.
Again, not a problem in the daytime. But this place has NOBODY there on the weekdays (people only starting coming in towards Saturday) and so at night, it was dead quiet. There were rows and rows of room with no sign of movement, and every time I came out of my room and looked down the long hallways, I'd be hoping that I didn't see something weird standing at the end of the hallway. Like girls with long black hair and bloodshot eyes in long white dresses.
Damn to every Japanese horror flick I've ever seen!
There was also the lift to the higher floors. I only used it once, since my room is on the ground floor. But the lift doors make a loud noise when they open and going up or down, you can hear the lift mechanics working away noisily. I'm sure glad I wasn't staying upstairs.
That's all STILL not too bad though. Wait til you see the rooms.
The rooms are huge and consist of two floors. Downstairs is the living room with the tv, a little fridge, a sink, toilet and desk. There are stairs leading up the bed room with two beds and of course, the bathroom. There is also a desk upstairs, which is opposite of the huge room window which span the entire height of the top and bottom floor, which huge curtains to go with it. The room has no fluorescent lights, only orange-y incandescent lights. Beneath the left curtain is the airconditioner, which blows directly up.
There are many things that are freaky about the whole room design:
1) The incandescent lights are not very bright. The room looks bright in my pics solely because of my camera flash, without it the room only has an orange glow and it's pretty dark.
2) There is one light just above the couch in the living room, but much as I tried, I COULDN'T find the light switch. And my colleague in the next room couldn't either. I never bothered to ask reception where it was, but everytime I watched tv, I pretty much sitting in a darker area than the rest of the already dimly lit room. This is the same area next to the...
3) Freakin' huge window, which faces the pathway outside. Where people could see me if they walked past and it was so dark outside as well, I had thoughts of weird things also popping outside my window and freaking me out (damn those Japanese horror flicks again!) So to ensure my privacy and prevent viewing of any strange things looking at me from outside, I had to close the freakin' huge curtains. And underneath the freakin' huge left curtain was...
4) The airconditioner, mounted to the ground near the floor. Which blows up. Directly under the curtain. Causing the curtain to blow upwards as well. Which gives the curtain a ghostly appearance. And my stupid aircond remote didn't work as well, so I couldn't adjust the temperature or speed, so it kept blowing the curtains strongly upwards and after a while the room would be freezing. Staying in a freezing cold dark room. Extremely not cool.
5) The wooden staircase. It made thuding noises with every step I took up or down. And at this I regretted ever watching the 'Paranormal Activity'. If you ever saw that movie and you remember the final scene, you'd understand why the stairway freaked me out. If you've never watched the movie, you just need to know that at the last scene involves the female protagonist being possessed by an evil spirit, walking slowly up the stairs... and the audience can only hear the footsteps... slowly and steadily coming up... and what comes next is the final freaky scene (there are alternate endings though, one ending is freakier than the others). Which I won't share here coz' that would either freak you out or spoil the movie for you. But anyhow, that made me not like the staircase in this room. I'm thinking probably not a good idea to watch Paranormal Activity 2.
6) The upstairs desk. You can't see it in the pic above, but it was behind me on the left of the room at the angle where I took the last pic of the beds. The desk had a mirror, and I used it to work on my laptop. So the beds and balcony overlooking huge freaking window would be directly behind me. And I would also get funny ideas of looking into the mirror and seeing something I shouldn't be seeing behind me, reflected in the mirror.
All in all, the only thing NOT freaky about the room was the bathroom, and that was coz' it was brightly lit. Nevertheless the room was so deathly silent, I just had to switch on music on my handphone every time I was in it just to break the silence. And yeah, I did quite a bit of praying while I was in that room too. It helped. Kind of.
Even THAT wasn't the most creepiest part for me. The thing that really got me was that I think I had my very first sort of otherworldly encounter here... although I can't say for 100% sure that what I experienced was really what I think is coz' it honestly wasn't too spooky... but it was definitely an odd experience.
On Wednesday (after we'd stayed there for about 3 nights already), we got back to the resort early when it was still daylight, and that's when me and my female colleague went to check out the indoor water park before going back to our rooms. There were some people there, but not many. Around 7.30pm, when it was already dark, I thought of heading to the restaurant pool for a swim, since dinner wasn't until 8.30pm. I usually swim at night when I'm at home anyway, at my condo's pool.
So off I went to the pool by myself... but then I thought, since the theme park pool was nearer to my room than the restaurant pool (which was all the way down that long 5-minute path), I went to the theme park pool instead. By this time, no one was there, and the pool area is as brightly lit as the rest of the place. Which means it was pretty dark, except for a few incandescent lights in the pool itself and near the buildings... but no light at the pathway directly next to the pool.
I left my clothes, towel and other stuff at a chair nearest to the pool before diving in. Swam around for about 20 minutes, no problem, before I came out. No problems during my swim, although I think I heard the trees next to the pool rustling a lot at one point... but I figured it was the wind.
Once I got out, still wet and unable to see clearly since I wasn't wearing my glasses, and about to grab my glasses and other stuff from the chair, that's when it happened.
I heard a women's voice, pretty close to me, just slightly to my right, and definitely not more than a few metres away. The voice said in Malay "Ada air tak?" (translated, it could mean "Do you have any water?" or "Is there any water?") . I quickly put on my glasses, looked around for whoever spoke to me... and didn't see a SOUL.
After that I coolly walked back to my room and fortunately didn't experience anything else for the night.
It doesn't sound too freaky, I know, but like I said, it was odd. The next day, I went back to the same spot and took these two photos. The red circle shows the chair where I put my stuff and I was standing just behind it when I heard the voice. The blue X shows the approximate area where I'm sure the voice came from. It sounded like whoever spoke was standing on the pathway.
It was also odd because if the lady was speaking to ME, it would have been a very strange question to ask me, a total stranger. If she was asking me if there was any water, that would just be a stupid question to ask, since I just came out of a pool where there is plenty of water. If she was asking me if I had any (drinking) water, that would be an odd question to ask a total stranger.
The other possibility was that the woman wasn't speaking to me, but to someone else. BUT I didn't hear any other voice after that. And I didn't hear HER voice after that either... and I didn't respond since I didn't see anyone.
On the less creepy side, the voice sounded normal, not creepy. And I didn't feel any chills at the time. So it was weird, but not downright freaky-ish.
Still, it was a good reason not to go swimming again for the rest of the nights. It didn't help that later during dinner, when I asked another male colleague how he found the rooms, he also said he had some strange experiences. Such as noises like an animal scurrying on the roof... although he's staying on the ground floor with 4 floors above him so that doesn't quite make sense. And his room window seemed to be loose and hitting against the frames, which probably was due to the strong wind. But that doesn't make it any less scary. He also said he had a bit of a nightmare on the first night he slept there.... where he dreamt of a woman carrying a baby. And the baby had no nose. Hmm.....Fortunately my other colleagues had no creepy experiences there, although they also found the room a bit scary.
So that's my take on this place. If you're looking for a holiday in a resort that's fun during the day and creepy at night, Lotus Desaru is the place to be. ^_^
