Haebangsan Hotel

I stayed at the Haebangsan Hotel for one night in January 2014 after returning from a two days tour to Hamhung and Wonsan. before going to the east coast i stayed at the Koryo Hotel and to my surprise the stay at the Haebangsan Hotel was better. Beside the fact, that I like smaller hotels more, than larger ones, the room i stayed seemed to be freshly renovated. It was well lit (not very common in DPRK), had a large new TV and also a new hairdryer in the bathroom. The bed was comfy. The staff at the restaurant friendly and the food good.

Not sure if there's any point in writing a review since we didn't have any option but to stay here. Was on a Chinese tour (much cheaper than a Westerner tour) to DPRK... was supposed to be staying at the Yanggakdo Hotel, but due to high volume of tourists, we were pushed over to this hotel for the first night. It's definitely shabbier than Yanggakdo and seemed to have quite a few North Koreans staying here (we spent quite awhile standing in the elevator, waiting for groups of North Koreans to get on and off at every single floor except for ours). We had international news channels on the TV in our rooms though, and a wonderful view of the city. Also, the first floor bar/restaurant has karaoke machines - if you're into that sort of thing, you just have to get some of the North Korean tourguides together and get them to ask for it (they all sound like superstar pop singers so be prepared to have your [--] handed to you). The food that we were fed with the group was terrible, but if you go to the bar/restaurant and just order your own food, it's much better.

With beds as hard as a rock, with towels as big as postage stamps and excellent service are nervous about this hotel is the life experience. The dining room is light blue and pink, dotted with waiters and delicious Korean and Chinese food.||The hotel has "spa", hairdresser, three bars and a shop. But most of all, this faltwy tower in North Korea.||jarleaabo@mac.com

Stayed here on several occasions, and its a fine hotel. Well - it is fairly run down, but the staff is friendly and the food is good. The beds are a little hard, so recommend asking for a second mattress, but other than that - the genuine Pyongyang experience. Go for it.

It reminded me hotels of Soviet era, just slightly refurbished. ||Room fares from $80. Due economy regime, it was cold in all places, temp not higher than +12C. The rooom was warmer with heated floor. No hot water from 24.00 till 06.00. Couple of blackouts per day - which is quite normal for the city. 5 TV channels including 2 international. Hard bed - some say it's good for your back, right?||Street loudspeakers start to play music and speeches at 07.00, so you don't oversleep your scheduled meetings.||Scrambled eggs at breakfast were great. Dinner at restaurant about $20 for two. Coffee $4-$5. Roof bar with nice view, adequate choice of drinks and terrible coffee. 2nd floor bar with good coffee but very smoky. One more bar at 1st floor. Book shop at 2nd floor. Foreign goods shop at 1st. Pool. Sauna.||Small office where you can print/copy and make international land calls (expensive). Most of restaurant and bar staff friendly and helpful. Limited knowledge of foreign languages, English and Russian are prefered.

It is difficult to rate this hotel but if you can cope with the very hard beds and a breakfast that has little of what Europeans usually have for breakfast ,the hotel is nice. Staff are friendly and the room clean. My room had a modern flat screen tv with 5 channels including Al-Jazeera, RT a Russian channel, a Chinese channel, local tv and a movie channel with western movies.||The hotel has a billiard room and fairly nice shops. One of the shops sell food ,drinks etc at a very reasonable price. A small bottle of water was about 20 cent euro. A hidden gem is a tea room/restaurant on the top floor of the “tower” this is not on the hotel map and difficult to find.||For breakfast you get white bread toast with jam and some local specialties, sometimes fried eggs. For drinking they only include the local”tea”. If you want coffee or juice you have to order and pay for it in addition. The espresso they make is very nice but very expensive compared with other things.

A cheap option in Pyongyang. Seriously hard beds, limited breakfast options in inclusive B&B rate, but otherwise acceptable. It is, however, fairly close to propaganda loud-speakers which can disturb periodically. Friendly staff. Benefits from easy access to the river, where foreigners can walk freely.

I had two nights here in May. The rooms were just like any other two star hotel elsewhere. The beds were not soft but not too hard. The restaurant had a good range of dishes and the staff were attentive in spite of the language barrier. The view out the window at night was interesting. We were on business and this hotel was allocated to us because other options were full.