Grand Sun — Hotel in Jiuquan

I have no idea how this is a 4 star hotel - it has all the glitz and glamour at first glance (large lobby, banquet halls, chandeliers etc.) but after staying just one night you realize that a lot of corners were cut. ||Firstly, our mattress is a box spring.. Not exaggerating. The hard sleeper I had on the train here was more comfortable. ||Secondly, no hot water and smells of sulphur when you run the taps. ||And thirdly, the reception staff were extremely unhelpful in checking us in. It's a frantic scene behind that counter - 10 staff helping one person at a time with a weird system of confirming reservations (100s of handwritten reservation forms stacked on top each other that someone has to sift through to find you). Needless to say it took us 30mins+ to check in. ||I'd prefer to stay in a smaller hotel if I had to choose again - but a few positives is location and lots of shops, restaurants and the night market all walking distance to...

Dunhuang is a pleasant small town (small by Chinese standards) that is easy to walk around. The Grand Sun is close to the center of town and a short walk to the night market. It is an excellent hotel with very pleasant staff, although very little English is spoken here. Our room, in the VIP wing, was fine with nice new furniture and a comfortable bed. The bathroom was clean. The included breakfast buffet was good but mostly Chinese. Since we are not Chinese, one of the staff brought eggs and toast and coffee and then remembered the way we liked our coffee on subsequent days. There is a strong in room free wifi signal. The hotel has an excellent value laundry service. In all, The Grand Sun is a great place to stay in Dunhuang and is staffed by very...

The layout of this hotel is crazy. On the outside it looks huge, on the inside it is a maze of twisting corridors and weirdly placed elevators. Our bed felt like it was a sheet placed over a slab of marble. My wife actually pulled it apart to look at it. It is the hardest bed I've ever slept on. We had some friends who brought an air mattress and they fared much better than we did. The water reminded me of the Coors Beer commercial, Rocky Mountain cold. Unless you ran the shower for about 15 minutes, you got no warm water. I would try to find another alternative...