Beijing Forbidden City Hostel- Beijing, China

Address: 5 Nan He Yan Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing


Website: none
cost 44yuan per night for a dorm bed (one 6 bed and one 4 bed dorm rooms) or 140 yuan per night for private ensuite double

We'd booked two nights in the dorm room initially on the Hostelbooker website, and thank goodness we didn't book any more. After dragging our suitcases for about half an hour from the nearest train station in the darkness, we were greeted by the receptionist not believing that we had a booking and questioned whether we'd actually made one! After showing her the email confirmation of the booking, she finally relented and showed us our beds (44 yuan per dorm bed night= A$7). The six bed dorm was tiny! Upon opening the door, we were met by three local boys just standing there in the room, which gave us quite a shock as we didn't know who they were. Later on, we realised that they were actually part of the cleaning crew, but how were we to know, as they were about 14 years old and didn't look professional at all, clowning around like they were.
We immediately felt uncomfortable as the room felt totally unsecure, with hardly any space to put our suitcases down. There was another guy and a girl in the dorm room but unlike people you'd normally find in dorm rooms, they weren't friendly at all and barely said hi to us. As it turned out, that was the least of our problems as one of the worst nights that we've had (probably THE worst) ensued. First, at around 1am, we were woken up by the lights being turned on as a couple checked in and took forever to organise things and settle down. The room's lights required a key pass being placed inside the slot, but as soon as this would happen, the ceiling lights came on and it would not turn off unless the card was taken out. Unfortunately, the newly arrived couple had the bathroom lights on so the ceiling lights stayed on as well, which was seriously annoying being woken up in the middle of the night as one can imagine.
Then a few hours later, they both checked out! I have no idea what happened with that but there was more awakening and noise. Then, at 6:30am the girl who'd been there before checked out and took her sweet time getting ready too. There was no way that we were going to
'enjoy' another night like that so we asked to pay the difference to move to a private ensuite room for the rest of the week first thing in the morning. The other guy in the dorm clearly wasn't impressed by the dorm experience also as he also moved to a private room the next day.

The new room (140 yuan= A$23 per night) was much nicer with clean sheets and bathroom. The only issue we had with the room was that it was always quite hot, as constant heating came through the wooden floorboards (don't ask how). It also wasn't your standard private room in several ways...by which I mean that there was probably only one of that type of room that we stayed in. Don't really want to elaborate unless one specifically asks!

They'd said on their Hostelbookers page that there was wireless internet through the hotel but in reality, there was only connection available in their restaurant- which was just a tiny box, only able to fit around six people at a time. There was a pool table in the middle of this which wasn't really used by anyone except the trouble maker cleaner boys that I'd mentioned earlier, which was annoying as they'd play in an obtrusive manner which wasn't very nice coming from a guest's point of view.
The hallways around the hotel wasn't cleaned very well, if at all, with dust and other small objects lying around on the floor. At least they knew how to clean the rooms properly. There weren't too many other guests from overseas, with the bulk of the people being local Chinese, so not many opportunities to meet new people. I felt that having only two dorm rooms, the hotel just uses this to attract a few budget travellers while primarily operating as a proper hotel, and made these dorm rooms so impossible to stay in that people are pretty much forced to upgrade to a proper room.

We had many problems with our stay here, most stressful of all occurring the night before we were due to check out and leave the country. They called us and said that there'd been a mistake with our payment and that they hadn't charged us the full amount. using complicated mathematics, the receptionist attempted to show us the amount that we sitll owed her. The situation was just extremely unprofessional and showed that they didn't have a clue as to how to operate their business which was an outrage as they should at least have half an inkling as to how to run a hotel if they are perpetuating themselves as one to tourists.

Overall, one of our worst experiences in a hotel during our trip; one which marred our last week in China.

Rating: 1/10