Judging solely from it's name, I expected this hotel to be some kind of a partner of Ryanair, and after having stayed there, it wouldn't surprise me if it is!
Going on one of the cheapest tours of the DPRK/North Korea, I guess we were destined to stay here, at the #8 of 8 hotels in Pyongyang. I didn't expect much, and that's exactly what I got. It's a perfectly suitable place to stay when visiting a country where luxury isn't readily available neither to locals nor to visitors. The staff is generally friendly and service-minded, provided you keep to the house rules, and all the little quirks of the place just keeps you on the edge, always prepared for the unexpected. (Except here the unexpected is to be expected, of course.)
We were placed in room 515, and it didn't seem that rooms at any other floors than 4 and 5 get much traffic at all. The facade looks imposing enough, but it's evident that a renovation is called for. Inside the doors, the lobby is rather sterile and dominated by marble and the national colours of the country. If you have forgotten any personal necessities, there's a shop opposite the reception where you can buy whatever you need, as long as what you need is a book of or about either of the three great leaders of the DPRK.
If you manage to brave your way through the long corridors, very reminiscent of the ones in the not exactly romantic comedy movie "The Shining", and you make it to your room, please be careful and do not throw yourself onto the bed. If you do, you will hurt yourself. These are the hardest beds I have ever encountered anywhere. Instead of mattresses, there's some kind of plank-like styrofoam going on underneath the bed sheets. You might want to bring a sleeping bag so that you have something to soften your stay.
Between the beds, there's a dashboard from where you can control almost everything inside your room. This includes the ceiling light. There's a turning knob with a small text that probably says in Korean that you can turn off the light by using it. It's not a dimmer, just a turning on/off switch. I don't read Korean, so I spent the first night sleeping with all lights on. The radio next to it is not working, but if it had been, you would have to choose between preset channels, there's no tuner dial.
The floors are all heated, so much that it's a good idea to keep nothing on the floor, for any items put there might melt. Fortunately, the bathroom floor is very cold, so you can safely store your stuff there. For an hour every evening and every morning there's hot water available, so that you can have a pleasant shower. Don't worry about missing that hour, there's no fixed time, they will arrange the hot water according to the schedules of the rather few guests they have.
Mind you, bottled water is rather expensive here, about 2.5 euros per bottle, so do try to buy yours elsewhere. Almost anywhere else is considerably cheaper.
Oh, and as others have mentioned, do always carry a torch. Especially if you're going in the elevator up to the top floor restaurant. There are frequent power cuts, and there might be grues lurking in the dark. Outside power cuts you're not allowed to use the stairs, so just try and time your elevator rides well.
During one of the nights here, I could hear much heavy traffic passing by outside. But when I went to the window to see what that traffic might be, I could see nothing. I was probably just going crazy.
There's BBC International available on the hotel TV if you're a trained remote control ninja, but for the rest of us, just watching the national TV persistent karaoke channel is more interesting anyway.
The food was also interesting, but first and foremost cold.
All in all, I was a satisfied guest at the hotel, but I do not recommend it as a top choice for anyone's honeymoon.
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Date of stay: April 2014
Rooms
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled as a couple
Room Tip:Make sure you get a room in one of the floors that have actually been finished.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Our tour included 4 nights of staying in Ryanggang hotel, but after too many people complaining about no heating and no hot water, they moved us to a different nearby hotel! (Sosan hotel).
When we arrived, we were told hot water will be available from 9pm to 11pm. Later we will find out that it was a lie, there was no hot water on that day at all. It was also very cold, as heating seemed to be non-existent. We all had to walk around with coats on, and there seemed to be no radiators anywhere in the building at all!
There's also frequent power outages that last about 5-10 minutes, although that's the case with most North Korean buildings. Everything in the rooms feels really old and 70s, and our room included what looked like an old wooden radio box that looked straight out of an old James Bond movie!
The electric wiring is in a really poor state. Half of power sockets are broken, and there's bare (and possibly live) wires coming out of the floor and just end abruptly.
But on the plus side, there was a huge flat-screen TV with one channel: the North Korean propaganda channel, where the female narrator tries her best to sound upbeat while clips of Kim Jong Un and some fields and buildings show.
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Date of stay: January 2016
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Traveled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
As you can read from the other reviews, this hotel is not one with Western standards. My bed did not have a mattress, it was a plank with some cushioning on top, which made it very hard. Soviet style, dark hallways. On the plus side, the breakfast was OK, and you can play pool and/or karaoke there (which is necessary as you can't leave your hotel when on a tour). There are also some 'normal' TV channels. Warm water is not always available, and power cuts are possible.
But hey, what do you expect? It's North Korea!!
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Date of stay: August 2015
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Stayed business and will never be staying here again. Staff were very rude and tried to get me to promote their little fat ruler with the dodgy haircut Kim Jong Un, and because I refused they threatened to have me arrested! Food was mediocre and tasteless a bit like the decor in the rooms. Prices are expensive for poor quality drinks and to top things off my bed was stained with something I found under a UV light... Do not recommend this Hotel to anyone and is more like 2 star not 6! North Korea is a horrible country with horrible rude people and we will never be doing business there again. There are way better hotels for a cheaper price in Seoul that completely out shine this awful place.
My advice avoid at all costs.
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Date of stay: August 2016Trip type: Traveled on business
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
With all of these millenials complaining about the dear leader's six star hotel, they forget that all of the problems they experience is due to opression from imperialist states in the west.
This place has impeccable service and they will treat you very well. If you are rude to the staff, they will be rude right back to you. Remember that you are a guest in dear leader's country and you should behave accordingly.
I highly recommend the boiled fish or hamburger. The prices charged are very fair for the high cost of maintaining a six star hotel to the best of their abilities even with the interference of outside sources.
Please also remember that of you misbehave, you will be transferred to the Warmbier suite which is not very nice but fitting for the types of people who are assigned this room.
Be sure to tip the Karaoke guy.
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Date of stay: September 2016
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Trip type: Traveled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Dirty, cold, and hideous. Western prisons are more welcoming. So awful. And so much brain-washing. I really hated this hotel. No wonder so many No. Koreans want to finally get rid of the Kims and all of their stealing and repression.
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Date of stay: March 2014
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled on business
Room Tip:Stay in China or in So. Korea
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
There is nothing to compare NK with the rest of the world, thats why you go there, so enjoy it. There is no service, padlocks on the fire escapes, no showers, no water or electricity most days but who cares you'll be out in a week if you behave yourself!
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Date of stay: April 2013
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I was appalled and shocked but the shear deplorable condition of this place. I would rather sleep outside (not in the winter) for a country that is state run you would think they would want to please travelers. I also had a slew of vagrant and prostitutes at my door.
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Date of stay: June 2016
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
My partner and I visited North Korea on in mid-April 2012 during the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth. As a result of the rare convergence of the Centenary, one of the first Worker’s Party Conferences in years, and the historic invitation of Western media into the Country to cover a missile launch, mere tourists like us were shuffled off to a hotel that probably hasn’t seen western tourists in years. If ever. As a result I doubt anyone reading this review will actually be sent to the Ryanggang again. A hotel like this needs graded on a curve. In the West, it would be a 1 star. In North Korea, it probably deserves an extra star since it would be luxurious by their standards. The hotel had a full complement of activities. A movie theater (we didn’t visit it), a karaoke bar, a rotating restaurant (That didn’t rotate), a ping pong room, a sauna, multiple restaurants (or at least dining rooms), a coffee shop, a book store (selling the works of the Kims of course) and a gift shop that only had bottled water when we arrived, but was fully stocked with Coke products from Singapore by the time we left. The hotel was….odd. I think parts of it had been mothballed, and our room seemed to have been one of them. In fact, the hall beyond our room was blocked off. We didn’t have a working TV (The plug in was falling to pieces) and the electrical outlet for it was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in a hotel. When the only light in the room was on, it actually crackled. And it was directly above frayed carpet. Given the cinder block construction of the hotel, I was afraid our room would become a giant tandoori oven. We had ample radiant heat from the floor, and we also consistently had hot water. However, the shower only came up to my chest, and we had no shower curtain, which resulted in wet floors. The built in radio was just a shell as the radio workings had fallen back into the cabinet. The wake up call (on the morning it actually came) was a recording of a North Korean man shouting something at us. The absolute worst thing was that we were given “Korean” mattresses. Or so we were told. They were literally a board covered with a thin red quilting, a blanket and a sheet. Over that was a comforter you slept under. It was honestly awful. It actually made a sleep number bed seem appealing. I was able to see a room in the tower, and it had a working TV and a mattress, so the quality of the rooms seems to vary wildly. One good thing was that we were in the low rise part of the hotel, which allowed us to walk to the lobby instead of waiting for the unreliable elevators. Our only experience with them was in trying to get to the rotating restaurant. If you can hide a restaurant, the hotel tried to do it. Only one of the elevators in the bank actually went to the restaurant, but there was no indication which one it was. We ended up in the wrong elevator, and after unsuccessfully searching for stairs, transferred to the correct elevator on a higher floor. While trying toi summon the elevator, we noticed that while the button for it only showed up, but the floor monitor showed the elevator descending. The karaoke bar was similarly hidden. You had to open a set of double doors, with a single door opening outward immediately behind them. It opened into a curtain. If you pushed the curtain aside, you would find yourself on the stage. Nevertheless, some people still managed to find it.
We were in the hotel 3 nights, and had breakfast there each morning. The breakfasts were acceptable, but I did witness one tourist getting chastised for taking too many eggs. Once by the server, and again by a supervisor who came out to wave her finger at him. The best story to show the flavor of the hotel happened to a fellow member of our tour group. At about 1 am one night the front desk called and asked if he would share his room as they were out of rooms and he was in a single. They were preparing to send up a stranger. He was such a nice guy he agreed, and although he stayed up for an hour, no one showed up. I would never, ever choose the hotel anywhere else in the world. But in North Korea it merely added to the bizarre society we were immersed in and it was a fine place to stay
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Date of stay: April 2012
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled as a couple
Room Tip:Try to get a room in the Tower and make certain you ask for a mattress
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Horrible place, but I guess still on the upper side of NK hospitality. Beds are wooden plates with a cushion on it. Warm water in the morning and evening for an hour each. No fruits available, but thats for most of the country.
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Date of stay: July 2015Trip type: Traveled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
There are more places to choose from in the Pyongyang area.
LOCATION
North KoreaPyongyang
NUMBER OF ROOMS
330
Prices are the average nightly price provided by our partners and may not include all taxes and fees. Taxes and fees that are shown are estimates only. Please see our partners for more details.
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Which popular attractions are close to Ryanggang Hotel?
Nearby attractions include Tower of the Juche Idea (3.9 miles), Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum (3.5 miles), and Mansudae Grand Monument (3.7 miles).