Golden View Hotel — Hotel in Sa Pa Ward

I stayed at this hotel as it was part of a tour I arranged through Ethnic Travel in Hanoi. It pains me to complain about the hotel as I found the staff very helpful and the room was fine. But all the agents in Hanoi get the hotels to arrange the tours and we were supposed to spend 1 day at the Bac Ha market about a 2 hour drive from Sapa and then visit a village nearby with a guide before going back to Lao Cai station. There the guide would help us get our tickets and arrange our dinner (prepaid) at a restaurant.||||This is what I was told by Ethnic Travel and by the hotel. Not only did we have no guide, we were dropped in Bac ha after a 3 h drive and told to be back for lunch in about 1.5 hours. After lunch we were taken straight back to LAo Cai, dropped at the wrong restaurant with no explanation, no guide and no one to tell us where to get our tickets. We did not even visit the village. This was a disappointing end to an otherwise nice trip and as a result I cannot recommend Ethnic Travel (who did not acknowledge my concerns) and cannot recommend tours from Goldsea hotel apart from the sapa trekking trip which was good.||||I do not mind sorting out my own travel arrangements but when we (there were about 10 of us in the same boat) pay more to go through an agent they should deliver what...

I stayed at this hotel as it was part of a tour I arranged through Ethnic Travel in Hanoi. It pains me to complain about the hotel as I found the staff very helpful and the room was fine. But all the agents in Hanoi get the hotels to arrange the tours and we were supposed to spend 1 day at the Bac Ha market about a 2 hour drive from Sapa and then visit a village nearby with a guide before going back to Lao Cai station. There the guide would help us get our tickets and arrange our dinner (prepaid) at a restaurant.||||This is what I was told by Ethnic Travel and by the hotel. Not only did we have no guide, we were dropped in Bac ha after a 3 h drive and told to be back for lunch in about 1.5 hours. After lunch we were taken straight back to LAo Cai, dropped at the wrong restaurant with no explanation, no guide and no one to tell us where to get our tickets. We did not even visit the village. This was a disappointing end to an otherwise nice trip and as a result I cannot recommend Ethnic Travel (who did not acknowledge my concerns) and cannot recommend tours from Goldsea hotel apart from the sapa trekking trip which was good.||||I do not mind sorting out my own travel arrangements but when we (there were about 10 of us in the same boat) pay more to go through an agent they should deliver what...

We booked a tour through APT Travel in Hanoi for a 3 day trip to Sa Pa and were assigned to the Goldsea Hotel. In short, the hotel was horrible.||||It started that everything in the hotel was cold and clammy, even though it was decent weather outside for February (probably around 15 degrees). In the restaurant and in the lobby it was way too cold to be comfortable, the rooms weren't warmer either (and without any reasonable heating except for heating blankets). ||||There was no real shower, only a vietnamese style shower head between the toilet and the wash baisin. The room had some mouldy corners and didn't appear to be very clean.||||The breakfest was a buffet with very limited choice on the second day and a la carte for the first day. If you order a la carte, be aware that "bread with cheese" means 2 large baguette breads with a single piece of La vache qui rit. The buffet contained no cheese - in the end we ordered some that we never got but that was charged to our room anyway. ||||We also had meals included - after our first lunch we decided to eat elsewhere (and can strongly recommend the Lotus restaurant!) because the food wasn't that hot either.||||There are plenty of hotels in Sa Pa, I'm sure you'll find something better than...