Golden Sands Resort by Shangri-La, Penang, Penang

Overall a decent hotel but the rooms are getting old and a little tired. Beware of the mosque singing before the crack of dawn, woke me up every morning!

Great hotel with great facilities. Location is very convenient.

I've stayed at Golden Sands Penang with my family 3 times, the last two times were this year. My experience is very mixed. The pool area is clean and absolutely fantastic for kids. There are 2 free form pools, one of them with roped off areas for little kids (with a tent cover), and adults. There are 2 water slides, and a nice little splash zone. There are plenty of vigilant lifeguards around. The staff in the pool area and in the hotel in general are very friendly and accommodating. There is a public beach in front of the hotel which is nice, but there are a number of water sports vendors there with their jet skis, boats, and parasailing equipment which ruins the beach experience quite a bit, although many hotel guests were using these services. The breakfast had a very large multi-cuisine spread which was average in taste for Penang standards. In my view, the rooms were quite disgusting. There was mold in the bathrooms (tub surround, in the grout, on the bath mat), the shower curtain had mildew, and the floor was sandy when we checked in. The sink drained very slowly and the bathtub had stains. The furniture is quite dated and banged up and the safe was too small for laptops. The bed was clean and comfortable. Overall, I am not sure I would return even though the pool and staff were fantastic and my kids absolutely loved it, because the condition of the rooms was so bad. Furniture being dated is OK, but the cleanliness has to be improved a whole lot.

We had expected better value for money for the price that we paid at Golden Sands. Upon checking in, they misplaced all of our luggages, our bedrooms were not made up till very very late in the day eg, 4pm and sometimes we even had to call them to come and do by 5pm. The ice machines never works and there was no ice

I like the freedom to roam around and freedom to use the facilities. The beach is magnificent!