Bayinhe Hotel - Urumqi

Dodgy Business Practice I approached a hotel staff called Gou Hai Tao to help hire a car with driver for the next day. Gou told us that the hotel had an ‘exclusive’ travel agency and immediately asked the company to give us a call. A man called Li asked us to pay Gou RMB200 as deposit. As Gou already left the hotel, Gou later called us and said he would inform his colleague about this so that we could pay it at the front desk and promised to issue us a receipt for deposit. Having finished the private tour the following day, the driver told us that the travel agency asked us to give it back the receipt. I refused as it is a receipt, not a debit note. The driver therefore called Li who aggressively demanded me to give him back the receipt over the phone. I insisted that this was my receipt to keep and then paid the balance of RMB800 to the driver before leaving the car. I saw Gou working at the front desk when I walked in the hotel. I didn't talk to him. Gou later called my hotel room at 10:30 p.m. but I didn’t answer his call. At 1:10 a.m., Gou called my hotel room again. I subsequently unplugged the phone. As there was no lock inside the room, I was worried that he would come into our room without permission the whole night. When I checked out the hotel the next day, Gou was not at the front desk. Two front desk staff deliberately took off their name tag and the male staff asked me to give them back the receipt once again. I didn't argue it with him, saying that I couldn’t find it and would later post it back to them due to safety concern. Wherever I travelled, I always opted for hotel’s car or the travel agency the hotel used. I think this was the safest way to travel until this incident occured. Room The room is in need of renovation – peeling paint on the ceiling, peeling carpet, dated furniture….. The most ironic thing is that there was a non-smoking sign but I found two ashtrays in the room. The bathroom towels were often damp. I called the front desk to have it replaced the first day but the same thing happened the following day. WIFI The wifi was not working in our room. The technician did come to fix it. But as soon as he left, it didn’t work again. I think it might be something wrong with the router. As I couldn’t access any international websites and apps, I didn’t bother to call the front desk again. Breakfast The official time for serving breakfast starts at 8:00 a.m. But the restaurant staff were still having their breakfast and most of food trays were empty at that time. When I asked a female staff for utensils, she literally yelled at me and pointed at the porridge cart where I could only find chopsticks and spoons. I therefore asked another female staff for fork. She told me that the restaurant only provided customers chopsticks and spoons. Location The reason I booked this hotel was because it would only take 15-20 minutes walk to the bazaar from the hotel based on traveller’s information. But Gou told me that the roads are now blocked due to road renovation and he recommended us to take a taxi as the fee was no more than RMB10. The dishonest taxi driver, however, took us to the highway and we ended up to pay RMB22 for a very short distance. The hotel was surrounded by renovated buildings and roads which could at times make the place very noisy and polluted. As the hotel is located in an alley, most drivers didn't know where it was.

This hotel, whose real name is Musbox hotel (keep it in mind if you wish to find it), was confortable and clean. The room was a bit crowded with leather furniture, but it looks good. The bathroom would have been the best in our whole trip if it wasn't for a badly placed shower wall (see my picture). The breakfast was very good. You can walk almost straight to the Uyghur neighborhood, it's easy. Just beware of one thing, the deposit is 1000 yuans, more than 3 times the price of the room!

Nice and clean Room. Good Western Style Standard. Food was included with a good variety of Chinese Selection. friendly staff that tried to help us finding the bus tocketing Office And helped with Taxi explanation. No English. Though, Concerge Service And Knowledge about Local and remote transportation could have been better. Surrounding was okay. View was very Limited towards Old Buildings. All in all good Hotel for this City.