As a first time visitor to Tibet I was keen to book a hotel myself versus leaving it to the at present mandatory tour company one has to go through to get entry into Tibet. Part of the reason was that certain reviews cast doubt as to the quality and cost of hotels booked through tour agencies. I initially contacted... More

This is a good 3 star hotel in the old section of Lhasa. The location is the best thing about this hotel. It is about one block away from the Johkang. There are many, many shops and restaurants nearby. The staff was friendly and spoke some English. There is a nice shop on the first floor. The owner of the... More

It was such a pleasure to stay at the Shang Bala Hotel in Lhasa. The Hotel was located in a great location, within walking distance to the Palace, Temple, shopping, restaurants and a great internet/coffee cafe. The hotel was decorated very traditionally, colorful, friendly, helpful staff who also dressed very traditionally. The Western/Eastern breakfast buffet had a great variety and... More

There seem to be two main types of beds to be found in hotels in Tibet: either really comfy ones, by western standards, or ones that feel like you are sleeping on a piece of foam over a wooden board. This place has beds of the latter type. So, if you like a rock hard, unforgiving bed, you'll be reasonably... More

The hotel is ok, nothing special, but nothing horrible either. The beds are very hard, like sleeping on a plank. Breakfast is good, decent variety. Not much water pressure but decent temperature. It's also pretty noisy, but quiet down after 9pm. The staff is helpful but english is limited. Good location though. More

We stayed in the hotel two separate periods. The first period (2/8/10 - 4/8/10) and the second period (9/8/10) after we came back from EBC. The first period when we stayed was okay. The room given to us was small and they had to squeeze in an extra bed into the already small room leaving us little space to move... More

Three nights Location is THE big advantage -- 5-minute walk to Jokhang Temple & Barkhor Bazaar. Awesome ! Breakfast quite good -- especially the yak butter ! Nearby Lhasa Restaurant 3 minutes away also good place to eat. Needed ear plugs because of construction noise and talking in courtyard below room. Internet cafe in courtyard at front is a nice... More

My friends and I stayed at Shangbala for three nights. Luckily we had rooms next to each other, because the walls were so thin we could literally hold conversations with one another through the bathroom walls. My friends' bathroom had a jacuzzi but the tub didn't really drain. Our rooms faced an apartment complex, and we could hear dogs barking,... More

Although the room seemed clean, I woke up the next morning with bed bug bites on my legs, back, shoulders and arms. It takes up to 9 days for bed bug bites to appear. I ended up with over 100 bites on my body. Our tour operator filed a complaint form and the hotel replied that they had many clients... More