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Mtwapa is the real Mad Max
I literally spent 24 hours here after planning to spend six days.
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*I literally had to get the hell out of this place. No wonder that the posts are infrequent and the information inconsistent. I hope my post below, which is honestly as unbiased *as I can make it, prevents anyone else from spending their money or time coming to this place.
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I'm not sure what the attraction of this place is. It reminds me of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Its dusty, filthy, disorganized and the mongering occurs only a certain time of night. Before getting here I expected something along the lines of Pattaya. But believe it or not for the first time I can remember Thailand is better than another place. There isn't a paved street or sidewalk in this entire city. It is just filled and choking with filth and madness. *Exhaust from cars, men is passing vans screaming at you to get on board. It's not a really nice place to be.
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A poster on this board has mentioned before this place is just not walkable. That's because of the poor condition of the streets and the overwhelming heat. Even the Prestige holiday apartments, where I stayed, is simply too far from the main road. And to get to the main road you have to walk a good 15 minutes down a long dusty road complete with heaps of trash and wandering goats. So dusty and dirty is the road that I ruined a new pair of Adidas. I'm serious. And this long dusty road gets incredibly dark at night forcing you to take a motorbike back and forth. And a word about the motorbike ride down this road-the road is so deep with sand the motorbike always loses traction and nearly falls. Thats a fact! BTW- the motorbike ride is 50 BOB. That (the sand) would completely negate me staying at this hotel a second time. Now again comparing it to Pattaya, where now I have become appreciative of the mongering setup there, we all know there's times where you have to take a motorbike. But at least the streets are paved coming and going from where you pick up your working girl.
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And they're simply is no daytime action in this town. I walked up and down the main road for at least three quarters of a mile and each direction from the Prestige hotel road. I did this for at least 3 hours. I saw one girl the whole time that even approached me. If their were working girls around they weren't hanging out in any of the bars and they weren't making themselves obvious. Very different than Pattaya where you have bars (and doable SW on Beach Road) where you can pick up girls all day long and you have even the blowjob bars that open at 10 am Like. Even the brothels in Patpong open up at 11 am o'clock.
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Casurina is exactly like Beer Garden in Bangkok that's near Nana. Nothing special. From what I can see most of the men that were there were clearly regulars. The girls seem to know all of them. In fact the girls either paid attention to the regulars or they were dancing by themselves in front of the big screen. They really didn't pay attention to anyone else. And although I was not expecting runway models I was bit of shock at the quality of the women. Frankly they just looked run down. I saw about 30% of the working girls come to the bar and joined guys that were waiting for them. I had never seen that before (not in such a large volume). The ladies really don't show up until 12 midnight. So you have to wait all day and all night in this dusty, malaria mosquito infested place just to have sex. Never ever have I had to wait so long. After sitting about 2 hours in this place I simply left. I didn't think it was worth the cost that I paid to get in and I didn't think the quality of the women were worth it either. Out of all of the women in there there was only two or three worthy of the 40 or so there even an approachable. It just wasn't an attractive situation. And I was frustrated, hot, angry about the wasted day and just overall disappointed. At that point I knew I was getting the hell out of town on the first train smoking as we say in America. When I left the club on the same side of the road as the club I encountered maybe 10 to 15 SW's. Some of them look young and some of them looked old. The road was so damn dark you couldn't see their faces if *you tried. Some of them were sort of sitting on carts some of them were sitting on rickety chairs some of them was sitting back in the shadows. I half-expected them to at least line up the way they do on Beach Road in Pattaya or at Nana. *And giving I didn't feel like walking into dark corners or walking around the back of oxcarts just to talk to a girl I just walk back to the hotel.
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I did walk to the two bars mentioned on this board across the street from Casaurina. They were just much smaller versions of the same thing. Again nothing stood out that was worth even talking to. And it seemed like the regulars had a hold on the place.
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And to make matters even worse there's absolutely nothing to do in this town during the day. And when I say nothing I mean nothing. The only Supermarket in Town, Tusky, is so small, so crowded and so hot you don't even want to be in there to socialize even if you could. The beaches are not within walking distance, there is no shopping mall, there is no Cinema, there is nothing.
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And BTW-if you come here without taking your malaria pills at least 48 hours before you get here (and finishing the whole bottle even after you leave) you are taking a massive risk. And although I have been bitten by mosquitoes before, the bites I got were huge by comparison. So huge and itchy they were I scratched them until they opened up. Glad I had Band-Aids with me as well as Neosporin. You have been warned!
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And unless you are a street food eater you will not find anywhere to eat except one chicken and pizza place. It's right there across the street from the supermarket. And it happens to be open 24 hours. Other than that there is no place to eat except if your hotel provides it. And given I'm very picky about what I want to eat I simply couldn't find anything to eat anywhere.
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It all this is a place to avoid. I understand that at one time this place was a great mongering spot. But those are the days of yesteryear and not now. I'm sure there may be people on this board will disagree with me about this place, but I think for a longer that's at least used to a little organization and a little more action than only the nighttime, this place will disappoint. I promise you that. For me I hopped on the first plane out of town and headed to Germany. Headed straight to a FKK. What A Difference A short flight makes.
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Showdown.
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Prestige Apartments in Mtwapa
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Prestige Apartments.
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Daisha Rd, Mtwapa, Kenya.
01573 2502114.
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[URL]https://g.co/kgs/9yR5P[/URL]
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Despite my scathing view of mtawapa, I must say that the accommodation I had, for a budget accommodation, was the best I've ever had in all the years I've spent mongering. And I think it's all due to the staff and the owner. What an excellent job they did from start to finish.
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Before getting into the Prestige apartments themselves, let me give out a little warning. If you are flying into Doha, and have the 1. 5 our connection, try not to book this. They literally make you run to the opposite side of the airport just to catch the plane. I'm a healthy, athletic man and I was completely out of breath trying to get over to that plane. I don't know why the airlines have such short connections like that and then place the airplane on the other side of the airport. It's complete lunacy.
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I flew into Nairobi and then took a $79 flight to mtawapa. But when you arrive in Nairobi immediately when you get off of the plane you can walk straight ahead to fill out the Visa form and pay $50. Once you do that you walk a few feet away and hand the form to the immigration folks. They take your fingerprints, your $50 and put a Visa stamp in your passport. Going through customs- they don't even look at you. Custom LOL. You just passed through. And then you simply eggs at the airport and immediately you seem to see the most heavily armed security I've seen in a while in an airport. These were soldiers brandishing AK - 47's. I wasn't intimidated by this but I found it very interesting. Right as you're exiting the airport there will be an orange cellular phone shop to your right. I immediately went over there and got myself a Kenyan SIM card. I thepaid 500 KES for the sim card and a 1 gb data plan. I let the young woman behind the counter set up the phone. I even gave her a tip because she did it so quickly. Then I went across the street to the the domestic terminal and waited for hours in the mosquito-infested terminal waiting for the flight to mtawapa.
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I had only contacted the Prestige Apartments the night before for an airport pickup. They immediately responded and promised the driver would be there for me and he certainly was with a sign in his hand.
I*was charged 2000 KES (only about $20) for the 45 minute ride to the apartments. He had a nice Toyota van.
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Immediately when you exit the airport you descend into hell. Rickety Shacks on both sides of the street and a massive never-ending construction project. One of the things I found interesting is that the African workers are all being supervised by Chinese. It seems like the Chinese have come into Kenya in a big way with big bags of money.
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When I got to the apartments it was very nice. The lady who was the office manager was very friendly and cheerful. She told me that they only has a 2 bedroom available and that she would give me that for the price of the one bedroom. There was a lot of construction going on downstairs. It seems like they were building a new office. The room itself is nice for a budget place. They do have wall air conditioning units in the two bedrooms but not in the living room. This makes staying in the living room a little bit difficult. But the room was clean and well-maintained. It does have a mosquito net in one of the main bedrooms. And the cleaning lady is the best. She actually carry my suitcases upstairs which initially I did not want her to do because she's a lady. But she insisted on doing it and during my entire day stay there she was very kind. I left her a nice tip when I left. The swimming pool left a little bit to be desired only because it looked a little cloudy to me. So I never got in it. There seems to be some expatriates who actually live there. So that was a nice touch. The owner and his wife and his daughter were clearly Muslims. I felt weird staying there for a mongering trip given that they were Muslims. And the daughter was very cute (maybe about 20 years old). She was probably about 20 years old but I quickly keep my gaze away from her not wanting my head or hands to be chopped off LOL. The only negative to the apartments was the dusty road to get to it. It's just not walkable are passable. It's just a mess. The road is choked with dust and sand in places that is 3 or 4 inches thick. As I mentioned in a previous post I destroyed a brand new pair of Adidas walking up and down this road. And even the motorbike had difficulty traversing this road. The hotel staff was great in that I wanted to get a haircut and quickly they found someone who could do it for me. And guess how much I paid? Only 100 KES For a damn good haircut. Although my stay was short I would highly recommend these apartments to anyone. But keep in mind the road to and from this apartment is not the best in the world. It's full of trash, domestic animals wondering about and sand that represents quicksand in my mind. But for a budget apartment I will certainly give this apartment an Aplus. And that's mainly due to the staff. They even drove me back to the airport after I only stayed for one day. Oh and one more thing. My clothes were very wrinkled from the trip. They actually had a young man who Iron all my clothes for 20 Bob apiece. Not a bad deal.
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Showdown.
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