Dandong Xin An Dong Hotel

We rolled into Dandong in need of a good night's sleep after hard-bedded night in our previous hotel. Three Adults, two children and a desire to be close to the waterfront. Mt wife teacked down this place with a very reasonable online price. it meant we wouldn;t get rooms looking over the river, but we could live with that. The hotel was easy to find, right down along the waterfront as we hoped and car parking was not much of a problem. Into the rentranceway we found ourselves in a well appointed shopping area with an elevator and stairs to the second floor reception. Reception was nicely presented, certainly less garish than some of the nicer Chinese hotels we stayed in. Staff managed to speak Chinese and a little Korean, so my wife handled the speaking, but certainly my limited Chinese skills would have gotten me through (why people complain on here about going to another country and having hotel staff speak the native language is beyond me). Our rooms were still being prepared, so we were given vouchers for a complimentary coffee in the coffee lounge, so off we went. The lounge was very comfortable and decorated in a quite classical, western style (think about the classic Victorian study seen in films, leather seats, bound books on shelves... that kind of thing). The coffee was nice and we were happily able to kill twenty or thirty minutes until the rooms were ready. Up to the twenty-fourth floor we went and checked the rooms. Bear in mind, there is (of course) a difference between Chinese five-star and Western five-star, but this was pretty nice. A spacious room with generous twin beds, a pleasant desk setup, spacious storage and large picture windows. The bathroom was large enough to easily accomodate a bath, but just a shower was available and oddly the doors lacked handles, which made it a little tricky to close them. Still, it was nice enough, with all of the usual bits and pieces you need. In addition, there was an automatic mah-Jong table in one corner of the room, a nice touch, but it went unused during our visit (except demonstrating it to the kids). Overall, the rooms were clean and well presented. One drawer on the desk was off it's runners (and me need to deal with such things manifested itself, so it's now in perfect working order again - you canthank me if you stay there. One of the drawers had picked up some heavy scratches from somewhere though and it seemed in their rush to get the room ready, they'd managed to forget to return the lampshades to the two lamps in the room. Whoops, perhaps, but no deal-breaker. When push comes to shove, though (and where it counts), we all had a good night's sleep and felt refreshed in the morning. Downstairs for breakfacst we found a pretty expansive buffet witha good combination of Chinese and Western style food. The restaurant got busy shortly after we arrived, but never felt over-crowded thanks to attentive staff (many of which were attired in traditional Korean Hanboks). As you'd expect, parts of the breakfast were better than others, but we all found it easy to eat our fill and were far from disappointed, I was particularly pleased to eat a more western-styled breakfast for a change, not quite perfect, but good enough. Well sated, it was time for checkout, which again was smooth and the staff made us feel extremely welcome. As it turned out, we'd left something in the room's fridge and when we called back (three hours later!), they were able to quickly put their hands on it and had it ready for when we returned. Yes, this is a Chinese hotel in China and most of the service and literature is in Chinese, but as a visitor, i expect to go the extra distance and in this day and age, there's no excuse to get stymied for long, even without a good grounding in the language. A very pleasant hotel, needinga little TLC in places, but well worth the visit and we thoroughly expect to return here when we visit Dandong again later this year.