China – Northern Xinjiang Hotel Review : European Getaway at Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort Aletai

One of the best highlight in North Xinjiang is Kanas Lake. We travelled for over 8 hours to reach our hotel for 2 nights Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort Aletai. We will be departing early next morning to go Kanas Lake so we have a whole day to spend in Kanas Lake. It is about 1 hour to reach the Kanas Lake from where we stayed tonight. When we arrived in the Hongfu Lake Resort, it was almost 7-8pm but the sky is still very bright due to summer.

Registration at the Police Station Before Check in 

As usual before entering the resort area, we needed to register all our passport documents at the gate and there is a police stations at the entrance of the resort.

Halal Restaurant

We dine at the Chinese buffet dining restaurant which can sit up to 200 people. The food aren’t that great and mostly are Chinese food. The restaurant buffet looks like dormitory canteen food.  This hotel resort usually cater for business conference meeting for either government official or company team building events.  So the dining hall is very big, like a school canteen because the decoration is very simple and the food is very basic too. The restaurant is also serve no pork as you see the word “qingzhen /  清真 written at the signboard.  If you want to eat your own cup noodles, eat it in your room and not inside the Halal restaurant here as Halal restaurant is strictly no outside food as your food / cup noodles may contain pork.

If you don’t prefer the food in the buffet restaurant, you can visit the groceries shop next to the restaurant and get some instant noodles.  In Kanas Lake scenic area, you can’t be too choosy on the food as most places offer very basic food but the price are charged at very high.  Another way is to bring your own instant noodles from Buerqin town before coming up to Jiadengyu or Kanas Lake, that way you can save money too.

European Style Villa

The hotel resort is very huge, in total there are 52 European style villas built along the mountains. All villas have 2 story.  I am glad to stay at the first floor as my luggage are quite heavy.  There are female helpers, ( most are Kazakhs minority ) who helped to carry our huge luggage to our room.  We greeted them “As-salamu alaykum” and they were so happy thought we could speak their languages.  We were just pretending but we did make them very happy and all giggles.  These Kazakh women speak with very heavy Chinese accent but sounded super cute.

Hotel Room Review

Well, the room is very basic.  There is no air-conditional in the room.  Since the hotel resort is located in the middle of the mountain, it was very cold at night despite summer season.  I slept with my big jackets and few of our tour members cough the following day.  I think they catch a cold.

Water is not safe to drink even after boiling

There is no free mineral water but there is a kettle for you to boil  the water before drinking.  Do not drink from the tap as China tap water are not drinkable.  We also have other tour members vomiting because of not use to the water here, even after boiling. To be safe, get your own mineral water and boil them.  That would be very safer.  The water in Altay mountain region has plenty of minerals and not suitable for city people.  When the nomads who lives here feel like having detox, they would go to a special place in the mountain to get the spring water to drink.  After drinking, they will experience diarrhoea for few days and this works as a detox to their body 🙂

The bathroom comes with toilet and shower room. The hot shower may not run so well.  Please let it run for 1-2 mins before you shower yourself, to make sure the water is warm enough.

There is no dryer in the room, you need to go to housekeeper to ask for one.  I heard the dryer are shared among first floor.  There are about 5-6 rooms in first floor.

Take picture with the Chinese Military Jacket!

There are two thick military jackets in the closet.  I think they provide thick military jackets instead of air-conditional. Cost saving and environmental friendly.  Please use this military jacket and shoot few pictures as this military jacket is also an icon in China.

Separate Building for different Groups – Privacy

The best things about this hotel resort is there are separate buildings which cater for different groups, that way you have your own privacy among your own group of people. The view outside the window room are just spectacular. The vast land with greenery accompany with horses and cows.

The blue little flowers and white dandelion.

We stayed in Block 27.

Breakfast is pretty much the same as the dinner we had.

The hotel also provide horse riding.

Final thoughts :

Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort Aletai is a beautiful resort hotel situated at Jiadengyu, the tourist reception for Kanas Lake.  Tourists usually stayover here before making up to Kanas Lake ( 1 hr ).

Most of the buildings here are resort which built in European style.  This place attracted many mainland local Chinese tourists.  You may have to compete with the mainland Chinese in the buffet restaurant for the food 🙂

You may like : 

• Buerqin – Little Russian town, 3 hours from Kanas Lake
• Heavenly Lake of Tianshan 
• Top 20 things to know in Kanas Lake – the Oriental Switzerland! 新疆喀纳斯
• Hemu Village 新疆禾木村
• Jiadengyu Glassland – Learn about the Kazakh minority 贾登峪 & 哈萨克毡房