We stayed at the hotel in mid-May. In short: because of the magnificent view from the balcony and the convenient location, the hotel could have been forgiven for many shortcomings and problems, if not for an incident that happened to us. Money was stolen from our hotel safe, a small amount, in the hope that it wouldn't be noticed. Instead of conducting an internal investigation, the hotel management chose to blame us, saying that we were responsible for what happened. The hotel was convenient for us as a base for trips around the island, and it has its own parking. Although the hotel was half-empty, they wouldn't let us check in a couple of hours early. The hotel is positioned as a Muslim hotel, which was completely unclear when booking. For example, the hotel administration suggests that guests refrain from consuming not only durian but also alcohol in the hotel. The room is quite spacious, with a couple of armchairs and a table where you can eat. All the furniture is old and quite scuffed, but tolerable. There's a small balcony overlooking the bay. The sliding doors to the balcony constantly came off their tracks. The bathroom and all its fixtures are old; there were no hand towels, and the sink had no stopper. The large flat-screen TV didn't work because it had no antenna signal. Gradually, after numerous complaints to the reception, the problems started to be resolved. When the non-working TV was taken away, it exposed its wall mount and a huge amount of dust on it, which was never cleaned before our departure. On the evening of May 18th, the day the TV was replaced, we tried to open the safe, and it wouldn't open, even though there had been no problems with it before. The next day, we went to the reception, and two staff members opened the safe for us. We recounted the money and found a shortage; several banknotes had been stolen, assuming we wouldn't notice, as the contents of the safe looked untouched. The missing money was easy to spot because we only took two $50 bills on our trip, and the rest were $100 and $20 bills, and those two $50 bills were exactly what was gone! We contacted the reception, spoke with the manager, asked them to call the police, and they refused. We went to the police station ourselves and filed a report. Late that evening, an investigator came to the hotel, questioned the managers and security staff, and spoke with us. We were told that they had reviewed the logs from our room's electronic lock and found nothing suspicious. The safe in our room was electronic, with a special connector – no one studied the safe's logs. They also remained stubbornly silent about camera recordings, even though many staff members had been in our room that day to replace the TV without us! And finally, we had a connecting door to the adjacent room; the door on our side was open, while the one in the adjacent room was locked, meaning anyone could enter from the adjacent room if they had the keys (and this would not be reflected in the logs of our electronic lock). The safe was clearly opened with a master code or key; two bills were taken from the stack, and then it was re-locked with the first combination that came to mind. The safe was designed so that the combination had to be entered anew each time, and the display was set not to show the digits entered, so when we couldn't open it, we thought we had simply entered the wrong code when closing it. The management took the position that we should have somehow documented the amount we put in the safe and recounted the money every time we opened and closed it. Apparently, we should have done this on video and with witnesses! No one intended to conduct an investigation among their staff. We are convinced that this is not the first incident at this hotel and that the whole calculation is that the theft of a small amount will go unnoticed by guests. Since we passed customs through the 'green channel,' the amount of dollars we brought into Malaysia was not recorded, so all we could present to the police were currency exchange receipts. Our stay in Langkawi was hopelessly ruined. After the incident, the staff stopped greeting us (there were no smiles even before), and we were terribly glad when we left this hotel for good!
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