Guilin Homeland Riverview Hotel

We were here in the Golden week so the hotels were all very expensive but this one was okay. Later a guy told us that the normal price is the half of that what we paid, but it was okay for Golden Week conditions. The hotel itself was nothing special. The staff was not able to speak English and it was smelling in the Lobby and the elevator. The room was okay. However the riverview is not worth to go here. You can only see a bit of the river due to the trees on the road. Actually the most important thing, the location, was amazing. it was obviously near the river and to the city and the market as well. This is the reason why I can recommend this hotel. For example it's only a 5 minutes walk to the twin pagodas.

Arrived at Guilin airport and found a licensed taxi. There are plenty of touts around but you are better of to go outside and get one off the rank as prices are better. The cars were modern and our lady driver was very helpful. A Quarter of the way to the hotel she pulled of the road and stopped. At this point we had a little concern as to what’s going on. She quickly changed drivers with a male who showed us his licence and we discovered she only drives to a point then he takes over. Got to the hotel okay situated at 17 Binjiang Road and opposite the Li river. The taxi was ¥60 around 12 dollars Australian and took about 30 minutes. We were greeted at the door with a nice ice drink and big smiles. Check in was easy especially as we had arrived a few hours early and expected to wait. The reception girl spoke good English. (We soon discovered this was not the general case in China). The room was small but okay overlooking the Li river as we had requested. It was clean, a little tired in looks and had all the toiletries you need and the shower was nice and hot. Our toilet did block up and on reporting this a plumber came straight away and it was fixed. There was no free drinking water in the room but you could boil a kettle as most hotels tell you to do and advise you not to drink from the taps or buy some at the local store for around ¥3 a litre. In the room it was ¥10 for 300ml nothing really but if you are on a budget all savings help. The hotel was clean, cheap and okay for a 1 or 2 night stay. There was free WIFI but very slow. Most sites like Google, Facebook and YouTube etc are not available anywhere in China. I did find WhatsApp worked on occasion so if you use Yahoo or Gmail for communication you may have a problem. You can use a VPN service to get around this so if you are someone who uses your computer or phone a lot I would suggest you investigate this option. If your service provider has a webmail option for when you are away, providing you use Internet Explorer and Bing this may be another option. It would not work for us on anything to do with Chrome or Google. Our river Li view was okay but one of the nights a band set up on the river bank opposite and unfortunately they were terrible, it was for a celebration that was going on in the town. We had ear plugs that helped. Just a short walk away we found some good eating shops and a KFC, plenty of food shops to purchase food, cakes etc and some interesting markets.

By China standards our room was clean. As in most Chinese hotels, the carpet could have been cleaner. The beds were comfortable and linens clean. Our room has a great view of the Li River and the hotel is with-in walking distance to West Street. We walked across the bridge to the Seven Star Scenic Area and took a tour of the park. English is not widely spoken in the hotel, but we were able to communicate our wants and needs. A young lady working the reception desk spoke some English and went out of her way to assist us. The restaurant next store had reasonable price food to go or eat in and major business street is located right around the corner.