| Satisfaction: |   | | Reviews: 7 | Photos: 14 | | Muara Tutong Highway, Kampong Jerudong |
 | Bandar Seri Begawan Empire Hotel And Country Club Reviews | 1 - 7 of 7 |  |
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 | Empire Hotel And Country Club: A Huge Empirical Resort
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 lobby, empire hotel brunei by mizzzthanggg
A colleague of mine who travels here quite often is not too impressed with the service either. And they ran out of salad and Evian water at one point. During that stay, Prince Andrew was also in residence apparently. Maybe HRH had special dibs on all the supplies.
Yeah yeah, it's supposedly a 7-Star hotel or something, and one of the Leading Hotels Of The World.
Everything's gilded - furniture, pillars, ceilings - and there's lots of gold around. I'm putting up more photos of this in my next few tips.
The rooms are miles away from each other. There's a man-made saltwater pool and a freshwater pool and all this reclaimed clean constructed beach type things.
That's my problem with this hotel. Yes, it's nice, yes it's grand, yes it's luxurious though not spectacularly more so than other great city hotels (but maybe 'cos I'm not Prince Andrew maybe I didn't get such fine service as he would). But everything is so... CONSTRUCTED and a little bit CLINICAL...
Oh, there's a bowling alley and a cinema within its grounds too. They also do shuttle services between the hotel and city center or Jerudong Park.
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| Empire Hotel And Country Club: Brunei's most luxurious hotel
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| Empire Hotel And Country Club: the best in Borneo
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The hotel is extremely impressive and I've never seen a grander lobby. We had asked for two deluxe adjoining rooms. Upon check-in, they didn't have adjoining, but gave us two rooms next to each other, one room upgraded to a sort of junior suite, so that was a fair trade. Both rooms had great direct views of the grounds and the ocean.
We had E-Club rooms which included breakfast in the E-Club lounge. These were excellent meals, eaten with real silver and china. I asked for HP sauce with my eggs; the waiter had no idea what that was, went off to find out, and came back with some in two minutes. He made a real effort. We had a meal in the Atrium Café which was also excellent.
I do not recommend the Pantai restaurant. The meals had fresh ingredients but just did not taste as well as their counterparts elsewhere. The service was also slow.
One problem at the end soured the whole experience for us. We had an early ferry to catch to Labuan, so we got up very early in the morning so as to have a leisurely breakfast, walk around, and non-rushed check-out. We asked for our bags to be brought down, but they didn't come. I asked about five times in the end, the last time raising my voice. We got up at the crack of dawn for this ferry ride and we ended up leaving the hotel 15 minutes late and rushing from then on because they didn't bring our bags down in time.
I would stay there again simply because I doubt there is any serious competition in Brunei.
The sand-bottom pool was nice and large with clean water and fairly clear of people. There could perhaps be more seating with shade around the edges.
The beach sand was not pleasant: darkish brown mixed in with the tan colour of the sand, and extremely hot for walking. It wasn't really welcoming to swim there.
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