Mr. Siam's house and the Sandyport community overall are lovely. However, we had several issues, mainly with communication, that complicated our vacation.
When we requested to book in August for a December stay, Mr. Siam informed us he had not updated his prices for winter. After some back and forth, we ended up paying $1,600 more than his originally listed price. As we were booking pretty late in the season, (less than 10% of properties were still available) our options were limited, so we booked anyway.
When we arrived, we discovered that Sandyport is a gated community of residents; short-term rentals are frowned upon by management. Mr. Siam has an agreement with them, but we were still questioned repeatedly by security every time we entered the community and were even pulled over and forced to call Mr. Siam to prove that we were renting his property. We also weren't given instructions on how to reach the house, so we had to circle the community repeatedly (apparently there are several houses with the same house number).
The house does not have any written instructions or manuals; Mr. Siam's property manager, Charlene, met us and explained how most things worked but did not know how to use the outdoor speakers or adjust the A/C. We then discovered Mr. Siam set a limit on the thermostat, preventing us from cooling the house to anything below 78 degrees. He said this was because of previous guests who set the cooling at 62. We were able to negotiate with him to let us cool the house to 72. Later, when the air conditioner leaked through the ceiling halfway through our stay, he raised the temperture to 78 again for 24 hours while repair people came to fix the leak. The repair people gave the all-clear and we asked for the temperature to be lowered again, but it took him 12 hours to respond.
Reading in the listing that Nespresso pods were hard to buy on the island, we planned to bring them with us as advised. We asked whether it was a Vertuo or original, since they use different types of pods. We were told Vertuo. The machine was in fact an original Nespresso, so the pods we were told to bring did not work. There was a drip coffeemaker, but it was broken. Eventually, Mr. Siam had Charlene supply us with the correct pods.
All in all, I wish we had booked earlier in the year so we had more options available to us. Mr. Siam's house is just not set up for rentals and he is unfortunately difficult to communicate with.