The Firefly Resort Semporna — Hotel in Borneo

We ended up staying 8 nights (after initially booking only 4) at the Firefly resort whilst diving around Semporna’s islands and overall had a great experience. The resort is only 10-13 min drive to the centre and it is very easy to get a Grab taxi once at the hotel.

The owners are very kind and the staff very helpful - special shout out to sweet Kris who went out of her way every day to make sure we were comfortable and had what we needed 🙏

The main building and gardens are beautiful and the rooms are quiet and clean, with everything you need for a few nights stay. (It would be great if there was a closet or set of drawers for clothes in each room, but as the resort is new I think this will be coming soon anyway!).

I’m vegan which was a bit difficult for the kitchen to understand at first but they did their best to accommodate us and after a few days of communication we eventually managed to get there. Hopefully they will cater more vegetarian/vegan options on the menu in the future. 🤞

Finally, the only thing that really saddened us and we were strongly against was the bird kept in a tiny cage in the garden only to entertain passing guests. We really hope that it is freed soon.

Otherwise we had a truly lovely stay at Firefly and hope to visit again...

Looked fine on the pictures, but quickly get the feeling that maybe one room was prepared for taking those while all others were disgusting and clearly hadn’t been properly cleaned for a LONG time. The ‘resort’ is located far away from the city, and does not provide transportation, so we had to call a grab every time we needed to do anything other than drink in the only positive thing about the place: the bar.

During the first of our 3 nights we found a cockroach inside the room, and the bed was crawling with little ants. We requested to change rooms, and we were given another, but similar room. Nothing was cleaned properly, and there was a dead roach on the curtain and ants in the bed. We never managed to get comfortable at Firefly, and would definitely recommend people to find somewhere else to stay, because it isn’t cheap either. It might sound like a fancy resort/hotel, is more like a hostel...

Had lunch here. The seafood is fresh! However, the masakan tasted so-so. The sweet sour fish is too likat, maybe too much tepung jagung or whatever tepung. Chewy kuah nya. Spoil the ffresh fish. The salted egg sotong so dissapointed. They used salted egg powder. It makes the sotong tasted like keropok/jajan. Again spoil the fresh and beautiful sotong. Maybe other people will like the style but us, no.

The black tea which costed rm6 in a very small cup is an average tea. The cafe have super high ceilling with one giant fan, at lunch time it is very hot. Lucky the drinking water(coway) is free. Boleh minum sejuk and banyak. love this beautiful place, hope the chef will improve his...