We’d stayed at the newer sister resort, Lexis Hibiscus, in the past and had quite liked the rooms, but the teething troubles had detracted somewhat. When my brother bought me a birthday weekend at Grand Lexis, open for a lot longer, we hoped to get all of the good, without the bad. My photos are even more blurry than normal, so I think my phone was drunk.
Lexis is a local hotel chain with three hotels in Port Dickson (with one more on the way), one in Penang, and apparently one due to open soon in KL, though I haven’t been able to find out much more about that one. Two are on the same site, Lexis and Grand Lexis. The latter is a collection of allegedly Balinese style over-water chalets (I don’t know why they say Bali; none of the village huts I saw there looked anything like a hotel room with private pool).
Check in proved awkward, as we had to pay (cheers, bro!); there was a little cheekiness too, as the receptionist asked if we wanted to pay to upgrade. Later, she gave us an upgrade free, and we suspect that the type of room we had had booked for us was unavailable due to a large corporate party, meaning they had to upgrade us! She also tried to charge one of us tourist tax when she shouldn’t have.
As at Lexis Hibiscus, there are buggies to take you to your room, and also as there you have to queue. If you don’t have heavy bags, then you might as well walk as it isn’t far. Our Premium Pool Villa was big, with two king beds, which were comfortable. There was a lot of furniture, actually, with a writing desk, sofa and various cupboards, plus a wardrobe in the main living area. The room centrepiece is a small glass square in the floor which you can watch fish through. Again, we didn’t see any.
There’s a little kitchen area with a microwave and a kettle (only one mug for a four person room, oddly), and a big bathroom area with a shower. They should really have put a bath in. They do have one of my favourite features – an outdoor shower. Shame to get to it you need to either swim or walk a slightly precarious pool edge due to slipperiness…potentially ending in a swim.
The pool is quite big for a hotel room, at about 6x3m, which is not quite enough to swim but very nice for relaxing. Definitely a good thing to have on a short stay. Strangely, the water jets seem to be centrally controlled. Housekeeping cleans the pool each day, as well as doing a very good job of cleaning the room quickly.
The hotel had quite a lot of extra activities, including archery, Segway rides, mini go karts, gyroscopic cars (not really sure) and more, but they were closed due to the rain! We did get unlucky with the weather… Each has an extra cost, as do the indoor games and arcade machines on the second level. Here there is also a Japanese restaurant, a spa, and a karaoke bar with private rooms.
The ground floor restaurant is where breakfast is served. This is a buffet with a lot of different cuisines to choose from: western, Malaysian, Chinese, or Arab, with other stations for noodles, eggs, rice porridge, roti and curry, pancakes, salad, pastries, bread etc. The food is mostly average quality, but the range makes up for it. One major annoyance was the hotel live band playing at breakfast. I suppose it’s just the hotel getting value from a contract with two performances for the price of one, but it was better when they stopped singing, as you don’t really need that first thing in the morning. Their guitar needed tuning, and so did the vocals.
We had dinner in this restaurant one night as well. Wife had the buffet, which was at a good price for a hotel buffet (RM60). Once more, nothing really exciting, but it filled her up. Because the vegetarian choice was limited, I ordered a veggie burger off the menu and received a large potato patty in a bun. Solid and unspectacular.
We got what we expected from Grand Lexis, then: nice big room with private pool and a hole in the floor through which not to see fish. A bit closer to Port Dickson proper, not that we took advantage of that this time, I think it’s a better place than the floral-themed alternative.
Address: Batu 2, Jalan Seremban, 71000 Port Dickson
Telephone: 066532000
Website: https://www.grandlexispd.com
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