Vientiane Golden Sun Hotel & Spa

The location was rough for me: about a five-minute walk to the main street, through a really smelly alley. I wouldn’t recommend staying here. The room was in poor shape. The floor had exposed nail heads, the bathroom was moldy, and there were dead bugs around the room, including lots in the bathroom light cover and a few live ones. I also found dead flying bugs on the bed and beneath the blankets. The walls are thin enough that I could hear the people above me having sex while I wrote this. The safe didn’t work, though the AC worked very well. There were two beds, a queen and a double. The queen was comfortable but had some sunken spots; the double was much too hard for me. This is a very old boutique hotel, and it shows in the worn-down rooms.

Friendly staff and good food too. A nice place to stay while traveling in Laos!

The courtyard and pool are pleasant and well kept, and the rooms are a decent size with balconies. You can walk to some nicer areas. The road right by the hotel is dusty and only partly paved. Inside, cleanliness needs serious attention. The walls are dirty, as are the elevator areas on every floor. Renovation work looks poorly finished, with leaks, gaps and details left incomplete. There’s no shower door, so water spreads across the bathroom floor, and there’s no bath mat. The toilet placement also stops the bathroom door from opening all the way. On the balcony there’s no furniture, and the exterior light stays on, with curtains that don’t block it fully. Wi-Fi kept disconnecting and dropping internet. Breakfast was small and unappetising. It feels like this hotel may have been great decades ago, but now it’s very run down, with too many corners cut despite the potential. A deep clean, proper maintenance and more care with details could make it much better. As it is, it’s hard to recommend.

We’ve stayed at Vientiane Golden Sun four times, and the staff have been amazing each visit. They’re the only positive thing about the hotel. We were the only guests this time, and I can see why. The rooms are awful, and I wouldn’t pay more than $5 a night. The AC units are old and barely cool the room. We set ours to 18C, but it felt like it only reached about 30C, and our room stayed hot. The wiring is exposed outside, with water leaking onto the balcony beside the table and chairs. I asked to move, but was told the other rooms had the same AC. Rooms have been renovated, and staff were still finishing painting. The kettle is very cheap and unsafe. Its plug is type A, used in China, while Laos uses type B outlets. They broke off the grounding prong and bent the others to make it fit. Since the renovation, rooms are half the size they used to be. Around the bathtub there’s old, dirty grout instead of tiles, and the renovation was minimal. The hotel advertises two swimming pools, but one is completely gone and the other was empty, with no water. Please don’t advertise pools when there aren’t any. Again, the staff are the only good thing.