Hotel Sandakan — Hotel in Borneo

We spent a night there, and was impressed with the room we had on the 8th floor, so we booked another 2 nights for a few days later when we returned from a jungle tour.

2nd time around, we got a room on the 7th floor. It was the only room with a weird huge sign outside. The bathroom tap was weirdly close to the sink such that your toothbrush would touch the sink when you're trying to clean it under the water. Quite gross. To prevent that, you'd have to spill water out of the sink. (Photo attached is of the 1st room on 8th floor) This is the only hotel outside of the US that I've found that has a fixed shower head. Please get with the times.

Water pressure was good, temperature well-controllable. Water doesn't drain well into the drain. Wifi was always strong and reliable. Had to call them to borrow a hairdryer, and was asked if there was one in the drawer of the dressing table? I told them no. When I tried to put away their hairdryer in the drawer, guess what? It doesn't fit. That's why there's none in the room?

There was a lovely adapter-type power socket with USB ports. I used the regular socket for the hairdryer and both the hairdryer plug and socket was super hot to touch after. Not sure if that might be a fire hazard.

While you would expect noise as with all hotels, this one takes the cake. The staff who were cleaning were chatting loudly and slamming doors, and we heard it all. The music in the walkway? We heard it in our room. There's also regular broadcast from a nearby building that we can hear. Dogs barking woke us up in the mornings. If you're sensitive to sounds, bring earplugs.

Breakfast was 95% the same the 3 mornings we ate there. Everything's room temperature. No warm food unless you toast some bread for yourself. We ate at 7.30am, 8am, 8.30am and the food was similarly not warm. Doesn't give an impression that it's freshly made. Fresh fruits were the highlights.

Location-wise, it's really close to a nearby mall. We were happy to walk to the nearby Dojo and Sandagen Restaurant for good food. The bus station is just there so you could take a local bus to the conservatories if you so desire.

Overall, fairly good room at a great price...

Decent enough place for honestly, a pretty rubbish town. I’m annoyed at them for not answering a query on the hotels.com app, through which I booked. They answered an earlier query on the app though, so inconsistency seems to be the theme. ||The hotel is at the edge of the small town centre, so it’s easily walkable. Big bonus in the room I stayed on the third floor… NO imam waking me thankfully, despite the hotel being next to the mosque. My room faced another block of flats rather than the street so maybe they had something to do with it?! Unfortunately you do hear the barking of dogs at night, as like everywhere in the country, the town has zero compassion for strays. 🤦🏽‍♀️||Room and bathroom were immaculately clean and there were heavy curtains. There is actually an English language channel on the old-school box television! No outlet next to the bed however, so inconvenient. And the wifi SUCKS, constantly turning on and off. So I just used my data plan. Better WiFi in that lobby and restaurant downstairs. Included breakfast wasn’t anything special: omelette or scrambled eggs with Malaysian 🇲🇾 savoury food (good mee- noodles- tho) but heavily meat-based unfortunately. Rubbish white bread offered on the buffet and only rice porridge. ||Great water shower pressure and steady hot water. 💧 Weird in that my room was cleaned but no towel replaced?! They offer some small toiletries which is not environmentally friendly. ||I really liked the bed and the pillows are but firm and thick which I loved. Also love two given per bed side. I do wish there was a top sheet though rather than just a duvet. The AC works too well then blasting on you, leaving you too cold but then it’s too warm when it’s turned off. A top sheet would solve this!||There is enough space in the room to include a mini-fridge. ||Reception is warm and friendly and speaks very...

Highly not recommended. They didn't provide basic toiletries such as toothbrush and they didn't bother to tell their guests about that. Additional requests come with additional fees. Do they have difficulties to define between basic toiletries and additional ones? How the front office staff answered my inquiry (I didn't ask for his name) is quite condescending. I didn't know your hotel procedures had changed and it's not my responsibility to find it out when you are in the first place didn't even bother to tell your guests about the changes. "Only room on the higher level is provided with a toothbrush" Then shouldn't you tell the guest about this before they decide to finalize their booking? I requested an ironing set and 2 sets of toothbrush kit and look at the ironing board they just sent to my room.

The breakfast menu was nice. They serve a typical hotel breakfast buffet. Still worth your money but if you want to take a room without a breakfast, there's a restaurant in front of the hotel that you can try.

My final thought, the location is surely strategic. There's few restaurants and self service laundry nearby. You can walk to Harbour Mall. But interm of service, I will not recommend and will not coming again. The building is old and you can see mold on the bathroom curtain and on the bathtub. It's so obvious. Lastly, there's few staff that quite biased when it come to local guests. You can see the difference when they speak with foreign guests. Jangan juga kasih ketara bah.

If they have time to reply with a copy paste answer to almost every review here, I really hope they also have time to improve...