Han Hsien International Hotel

The employees were rude, and outside the hotel it smelled like a sewer. The rooms are dated, and the price feels insane for what you get. This is genuinely the worst five-star hotel I’ve stayed in, after traveling across most of Asia, South America, Europe, and the US. I suspect the reviews might be fake, or that foreigners are charged a totally different price from locals. They clearly didn’t want us there.

The views were phenomenal, the service fantastic, and although the rooms look old, they were very clean. I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the armchair just looking out over the city. Breakfast had a lot of variety and was delicious. The Wi-Fi in the room was so bad it was practically unusable, and the toilet lever had to be held down for five seconds to finish flushing. Odd, but neither of those things would have cost the hotel a star for me. I picked this hotel partly for the gym, mainly to train my upper body. I went down in slippers and worked out for a while before noticing a Mandarin sign that looked like a warning. After translating it, I learned slippers weren’t allowed, probably because they don’t always give stable footing. I had clean socks on, and the room had carpet, so I took the slippers off. Ten minutes later a staff member said I needed proper shoes to keep using the room. I only had my regular outdoor shoes and hiking shoes with me, and neither seemed suitable for a clean carpeted space or the machine footrests. I wasn’t going to buy another pair just to do exercises that didn’t require standing, and I had no room in my luggage. I would have understood the rule for people on treadmills, but I was only lifting dumbbells and using the upper body machines. Those machines were old and bulky, and most only did one thing. There was a leg extension, a preacher curl machine that put your arms almost at a 90-degree angle from your body to start, and a butterfly machine where you lean back and push with your elbows. The leather rests were very worn, and the stepper was broken. I’d give it a 3.5 if I could. The staff were friendly and professional enough that a 3 feels unfair, so I’m leaving it at 4.

About a 10-minute walk from the MRT station, where there are shops and restaurants. There are Youbike rental spots nearby, and a fruit shop too.

My family and I stayed here for a few days to attend my brother’s reception on the hotel’s top floor. All our rooms had two beds, and the service was okay. In the middle of the night, my sister woke up because people were talking outside. She called the operator, but they didn’t handle it well, so she had to tell the people herself to be quiet because others were sleeping.