Zhiwaling Ascent

To start with the positive, the rooms are beautiful and most of the employees of the place very friendly and helpful. However, the one point which made the entire stay unenjoyable in the end and created a very bitter taste was how they ripped us off with the dinner charges. First, they never mentioned the price of the dinner to us and their menus consisted just of a set menu with no prices whatsoever (which made us believe that the dinner was included as it was the case for other hotels in Bhutan). The drinks menu had prices which was clear and easy to handle and we got charged our drinks amount fair and square upon checkout. After we have checked out and left the hotel long time ago, our tour operator all of a sudden informed us that the Zhiwa Ling reached out to them with an insanely overpriced bill for missed dinner payments - around 50 USD per person per dinner. At this point, we were willing to pay but not that much. Not only was the food at best mediocre, also my fiance who had problems with her stomach didn't order all of the courses on the pre set menu. When notifying the hotel manager of the short coming of not mentioning the prices beforehand, they agreed that they made the mistake but sticked to their narrative of us having to pay anyway. When we pointed out that we didn't have all of the 4 courses in all dinners, they came up with the ridiculous excuse that only the main is to be paid (since that was the only course we both had during both dinners) as the other courses are coming for free next to it. Bottom line, just inacceptable managerial behavior which just left us feeling ripped off and not at all appreciated. For the future travelers, please just order starter, soup and dessert as they should be for free and skip the main which is in no way worth 50 USD. We also spoke to a hotel manager of a different luxury hotel in Paro who confirmed that the costs for food are basically near 0 in Bhutan.

Clean, attractive decor, nice bath products. We just had one nights stay. It was comfortable and the beds & linen was nice. Dining was just ok but not worth the price. Very high end and expensive place for the area.