We stayed at the Xiamen Marine Garden Hotel during the May week long holiday.

These holidays as are known as "Golden Weeks" due to the amount of money splashed around, but along with National Day and Spring Festival holidays, are extrememly busy as hundreds of millions of Chinese take holidays and flock to popular destinations, swamping the transport system on their way. We are expat Aussies living in China so we are used to the crowds.

However the Hotel being the only 4 star establishment on Gulanyu island, was a quiet haven and was everything a 4 star hotel should be, with nothing missing. We stayed in a suite, which was nice with 2 TVs, fridge, safe and bathrobes.

The rooms were very clean and well maintained as would be expected.

The pool was indoors, and hidden away in the bowels and only allowed swimming in the late afternoon and evening, so it was really only for excercise, not for lounging around.

We couldn't find the tennis court but we saw some people with racquets heading off so it must have been there somewhere within the acres of the complex.

The business centre wanted a ridiculus 1RMB per minute for web accesswhich we refused to pay although the rooms all have internet connections and I think they were putting in WIFI.

Breakfast was included and was typical fare with lots of Chinese selctions plus bacon and fried eggs for Westerners. Coffee was just Nescafe and the juice was actually orange cordial.

We didn't bother with the restuarant for other meals as the food was much more fun and cheaper outside.

Our prebooked coupons, the reception pointed out, didn't take into account that we were there during a holiday, so they added 200RMB to each days bill, and also tried to charge us the taxes and service charge that our coupon stated were already included.

We managed to avoid the taxes but still had to pay the holiday surcharge which was a sour point as I think that when you have a reservation coupon stating a certain charge, that should be honoured.

The night we arrived at the ferry terminal (Gulanyu is a small island 10 minutes by ferry from Xiamen) it was raining and as we had no idea where the hotel was we rang them to ask for a shuttle bus to pick us up, but they wanted 150RMB so we declined and a kind local on his evening walk showed us the way which turned out to be a 5 minute walk! (the 35 minute 25km taxi ride from the airport to the ferry only cost us 65RMB).

Staff at the hotel were all friendly, the air conditioning great the gardens and buildings were all well looked after so all in all it was worth the originally quoted 450RMB but not really the 750RMB we ended up paying.

Gulyanyu has no cars or bicycles only electric golf buggy style "Wally Wagons" to take people around so its very quiet and peaceful and one of the niceest places we have found in China.