Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Penang – A Return After 13 Years
Over a decade ago, I read about a European couple in a magazine. They’d escape winter by spending six months – half the year at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang in Penang. Every year. They did this so faithfully, for so long, that the resort mounted personalised plaques on their suite doors. Engraved. Something you do for family, not guests. The article didn’t say much more than that, but it stayed with me. What kind of place inspires that level of devotion? What makes someone choose the same hotel room over everywhere else in the world, year after year, until there are no more years left?
This trip to Shangri-la Rasa Sayang, I finally got the rest of the story. A senior staff member who’s been at this Shangri-La Rasa Sayang for decades sat with me and told me about Wilma and Frederick. Their names. Their routines. The way they’d arrive and settle in was like coming home, because it was home – half the year, every year, until they both passed. He told me this with the kind of tenderness you reserve for people you actually knew, actually cared about. Not guests. Family.
What kind of place makes people want to return so badly they engrave their claim into the wood?
I had to see for myself.
That first visit to Shangri-La Rasa Sayang – God, almost thirteen years ago now left marks I didn’t expect. I spent a whole week there and never left the resort. Not once. I ate here, slept here, drank here. And I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. It just felt homely in a way luxury resorts rarely do.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang isn’t the usual resort memories where everything blurs into one long cocktail by the pool. I remember specifics. The masseuse, a retired school teacher, who gave me a foot massage that felt like he was untangling my entire nervous system and had stories that kept me there an extra hour. The breakfast staff who knew how I like my Earl Grey by day two. And the trees. Those ancient, sprawling rain trees with branches so wide they created cathedral spaces underneath, older than anyone walking these gardens, older than the Penang resort itself.
You don’t forget trees like that. You don’t forget a place that feels less like a hotel and more like somewhere you’ve been before, in some better version of your life.
I’m back now at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang. Finally. And sitting here on this terrace in the soft early light, the birds still working through their morning songs, watching the day spill across the water, I can tell you: that feeling hasn’t changed one bit.
My Rasa Junior Suite
The bathtub is on the terrace. Not in the bathroom – on the terrace, open to the sky, surrounded by a century-old rain tree canopy so thick the light filters through in coins of gold and green. Below, past the garden that sprawls like an estate from another era, the Andaman Sea is waking up.
The Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Junior Suite in the Rasa Wing isn’t trying to impress you with marble or gold fixtures or whatever signals “luxury” these days. It is spacious in a way that feels intentional, like someone actually thought about how you’d move through the space, where you’d put your book down, how the morning light would hit.
The bed sort of embraced me all night. The pillows – I didn’t want to get out of bed. A friend who stayed here five years ago still talks about rain shower! Five years later, she remembers the shower. That’s the kind of detail at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang for you.
One afternoon, I came back to my room and found a handwritten note from housekeeping wishing me a good day. Someone actually took a pen and wrote it. It made me smile. These days, when everything’s automated and templated, a handwritten note feels almost radical. But that’s Shangri-La Rasa Sayang. They still do things the old way, the personal way, because it matters.
It’s early morning. I’m in my outdoor bath (because why not) with a book in my hand, listening to the birds work through their entire repertoire – chattering, trilling, calling across the garden while the morning prayer drifts up from somewhere in Batu Ferringhi below, that beautiful haunting melody weaving through the birdsong. This is what I love about the Rasa Wing Junior Suite – yes, the luxury, but more than that, these moments.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Gardens: The Timeless Beauty
Let’s talk about what makes this Shangri-La Rasa Sayang different, because it isn’t the beach. Not really.
Most beach resorts give you palms and powder sand and that postcard fantasy you’ve seen a thousand times. Shangri-La Rasa Sayang gives you something stranger and better: rain trees. Over a hundred years old, some of them. Preserved, protected, allowed to sprawl across the grounds. The resort built around them, not the other way around.
The resort itself stays low. Five stories max. No towers stabbing the sky, no casting shadows across the gardens. Instead, you get these massive old trees, their canopies so thick they create rooms of shade underneath, and birds everywhere – actual birds, not just the gulls you expect – and butterflies that appear in the late afternoon like clockwork.
Walking through the gardens feels like you’ve wandered onto a private colonial estate by the sea – one with impeccable taste and staff who genuinely care. That old-money ease, relaxed, gracious, effortless. A place that knows what it is and doesn’t need to prove anything.
You see it in the guests too. People don’t just pass through here. I’ve met couples who stayed for weeks and months. Not the one-or-two-night crowd. People who’ve found something worth returning to, worth settling into. For a luxury resort, that tells you everything.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang hasn’t built a hotel. They’ve built a home that happens to have room service.
Rasa Wing Breakfast Privilege
If you’re staying in the Rasa Wing at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang, you have a choice: breakfast at Spice Market Café or Feringgi Grill. Both are included, both are excellent, but they’re completely different experiences.
Yes, there’s the massive buffet at Spice Market Café – and it is impressive. Theatre kitchens with chefs cooking fresh. A man pulling teh tarik with that dramatic pour locals have perfected. Local delicacies like roti bakar with kaya, nasi lemak, char kuey teow made to order. Western stations with eggs of any style, pastries, fresh fruits. The selection is endless, elaborate, almost overwhelming. It is lively, bustling, the kind of breakfast where you circle back three times because you keep spotting something new. I’m glad I managed to sit outside somehow under a century old rain tree. Peaceful enjoying my teh tarik there.
Breakfast at Feringgi Grill however is different.
Located on the mezzanine level of the Rasa Wing, this is fine dining for breakfast. There’s a small buffet section – fresh juices, cereals, yoghurt, salads, pastries, but the focus here is on what arrives at your table. Your tea comes in a proper pot with a small milk jug on the side. Coffee served in delicate china. Everything plated on proper fine dining ware – no buffet trays, no crowds jostling for position.
The menu offers made-to-order dishes: poached eggs exactly how you want them, eggs Benedict, the curry mee and nasi lemak that’s so good you wonder why anyone orders Western food. Each dish is prepared fresh and brought to your table by attentive staff who remember you from yesterday.
The space itself is beautiful. Windows all around frame views of the rain tree gardens and the Andaman Sea beyond. It is spacious, stylish, and quieter than the main dining room. You’re not navigating endless buffet stations or deciding between twelve types of bread. You sit, you order, you’re served.
You sit there with your Earl Grey and your perfectly poached eggs, watch the morning light play across the water through those floor-to-ceiling windows, and suddenly breakfast isn’t just fuel. It’s a moment. It is what you came here for.
The Rasa Wing guests have this option, and honestly, it’s worth waking up for, even if you’re still so jet-lagged.
High Tea: Another Rasa Wing Indulgence
Between 3 and 4 pm, the Rasa Wing lounge at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang serves proper English-style high tea – and by proper, I mean the full experience.
I arrived late and asked for a smaller portion, so mine came plated. I watched other guests receive the full three-tiered stand: delicate finger sandwiches on the bottom, freshly baked scones with clotted cream and jam on the middle tier, and an array of beautiful pastries and desserts on top. Tiny éclairs, fruit tarts, little cakes that look almost too pretty to eat. The selection changes, but the quality doesn’t. It’s that civilised afternoon ritual that makes you understand why the British colonials insisted on keeping this tradition even in tropical heat.
Fair warning though: pace yourself. As good as the high tea is, the canapés and cocktails start at 5:30 p.m., and you’ll want room for those too. This is the beautiful problem of being a Rasa Wing guest at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang – deciding which indulgence to prioritise!
Canapés and Cocktails: The Rasa Wing Privilege
I arrived early to the afternoon canapés and cocktails at the Rasa Wing lounge. Piano player working through something soft and old-fashioned. I had a glass of the bottomless bubbly – and yes, bottomless means bottomless, they’re not stingy – and I was watching the waiter move through the room.
He stopped at the table next to mine. Empty table. Set down two glasses of wine. One white, one red. Specific spots, like he’d measured. Then walked away.
And sure enough, at 5.45 pm on the dot, a couple walked in. The man sat down where the red wine waited. The woman took the seat with the white. They didn’t even look at the glasses. Just picked them up like it was the most natural thing in the world, like coming home to a drink your partner had already poured.
That’s the thing about Shangri-La Rasa Sayang. It is not palm-on-heart greetings at the door – though they do that too, and they mean it. It is the details nobody asked for. The wine glasses that wait. The plaques on the doors. The masseuse who used to teach kids and now gives the kind of massage that makes you forget you have a spine.
The canapés, by the way, are exceptional. Not just nuts and crackers. Actual thought went into them. A beautiful selection of artisan cheeses – soft bries, aged cheddars, creamy blues – complemented with candied nuts, fresh grapes, fig jam, and artisanal crackers. The canapés themselves are beautifully presented: delicate smoked salmon served on clay spoons, perfectly seared beef on crostini, tiny quiches that somehow pack serious flavour. Little bites that make you reach for another, and another, and suddenly you’ve had dinner and you didn’t even notice. The piano keeps playing. The bubbly keeps coming. You lose track of time, which is exactly the point.
This isn’t one of those generic hotel business lounges where you grab a sad sandwich and check your email. This is exclusively for Rasa Wing guests. Intimate. Personal. The kind of place where they know your wine preference before you sit down, where the pianist might remember you requested a certain song last week. It feels less like a hotel amenity and more like being invited into someone’s very elegant living room every evening at 5:30 pm.
That is Rasa Wing privilege at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang for you.
Feringgi Grill Shangri-La Rasa Sayang: Fine Dining With A Flair
Feringgi Grill has been Penang’s benchmark for fine dining since 1973 – over five decades of dining excellence.
Let me tell you about dining alone at Feringgi Grill at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang, because as a solo traveller, I book dinner for one at romantic fine dining restaurants, and I have zero regrets about it.
The staff at Feringgi Grill greeted me at the entrance and handed me a single, perfect rose. Not ironically. Not with pity. Just… Here’s your rose, because you deserve one. I almost laughed, but honestly? It set the tone for the entire evening.
The signature tomato soup arrived first, and this wasn’t soup poured from a pot. The waiter prepared it tableside, flambéing it right in front of me – flames licking up, that sharp smell of alcohol burning off, the whole theatrical moment of it. For a solo diner. They could have just brought it out from the kitchen, but no. They gave me the show.
The grilled cod came next, smoky and delicious, the kind of fish that flakes perfectly under your fork. But the steak – God, the steak was so tender. You know that moment when you cut into meat and it just yields no resistance, and you think, “whoever cooked this actually cares”? That.
Then came the grand finale: crêpes Suzette. More fire. More tableside drama. The waiter folded and flamed the crêpes with the kind of precision that suggested he’d done this a thousand times and still cared about getting it right. The whole restaurant smelled like caramelised sugar and orange liqueur.
Here’s the thing about being alone in a fine dining restaurant: it can go one of two ways. Either you feel conspicuous and awkward, or the staff makes you feel like you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. The team at Feringgi Grill Penang did the latter. They were kind without being overly solicitous, friendly without hovering. They treated my solo dinner like it mattered, because it did.
I left with my rose, full and happy, thinking that maybe dining alone isn’t lonely at all when the experience is this good at Feringgi Grill.
CHI, The Spa: Where Time Stops
Tucked into a secluded corner of the Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort, past the Rasa Wing pool and down a wooden walkway shaded by those ancient rain trees, you’ll find CHI, The Spa.
One treatment worth surrendering to is Asmaradana. The name translates to fire of love, an iconic song from a classic Malaysian fantasy film. While it sounds poetic, the experience feels deeply grounding – almost like your body is being gently coaxed back into balance.
The treatment uses ginger oil and steamed linen poultices filled with local herbs, lemongrass, and pandan leaves, all warmed and pressed into your muscles with the kind of intuitive pressure that makes you forget you have bones. It’s an authentic Malaysian massage, practiced by traditional healers, and lying there in one of CHI’s private garden villas, listening to birds and feeling those warm herbal compresses work out tension I didn’t even know I had.
Refreshed, I walked out of there so relaxed I could barely remember how to get back to my suite, in the best possible way!
The Rasa Wing Difference
The entire Shangri-La Rasa Sayang is exceptional. You could stay in the Garden Wing and have a beautiful experience – the same ancient rain trees, the same genuine staff, the same soul of the place that makes people return year after year.
But the Rasa Wing? That’s where you go when you want all of that, plus a layer of intimacy that turns a luxury stay into something that feels almost residential.
It starts with the small things. By day two, the breakfast staff at Feringgi Grill knew how I like my Earl Grey – no prompting, no reminder, just remembered. That kind of attention doesn’t come from training manuals. It comes from a team small enough to actually see you.
The adult-only pool, exclusively for Rasa Wing guests, is embraced by the garden. It is quiet. Peaceful. You can actually read a book without someone blasting Tik Tok videos on full volume.
Then there’s the afternoon ritual of high tea, and at 5:30 pm, those canapés and free-flow cocktails in the Rasa Wing lounge, the pianist playing something timeless, and that moment when you realise you’ve been sitting there for two hours without checking your phone once. The high tea service, the breakfast with a sea view at Feringgi Grill instead of the bustling main buffet, these aren’t just perks. They are the difference between staying at a resort and feeling like you have a private club within a resort.
The wine glasses were waiting at precisely 5:30 pm. The staff who greet you politely by name. The sense that you’re not just another guest in a 300-room property, but someone they actually know.
Rasa Wing is premium, yes, but what makes it special isn’t marble or gold. It is scale, or rather, the lack of it. A small enough team to remember your Earl Grey order. Quiet corners. An adult-only pool. A lounge where the staff memorise wine preferences, not room numbers.
You’re paying to feel less like a guest and more like you’ve come home to a place that’s been waiting for you.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang: More Than Just a Name
The name “Rasa Sayang” comes from a beloved Malay folk song – one of the first songs children learn in schools throughout Malaysia. “Rasa” means to feel, and “Sayang” means love. Together, it captures that warm sense of affection and connection that binds a community together. It’s joyful, communal, about caring for one another.
The song’s spirit isn’t just in Shangri-La Rasa Sayang’s name. It lives in how they operate.
Through their “Embrace Gift of Life” programme, the resort has funded life-saving heart surgeries for children who needed them. They’ve adopted local children’s homes, providing support and care beyond what’s required. This isn’t corporate responsibility as a checkbox. It is what “Rasa Sayang” – that feeling of love looks like in practice.
The same attention they give, to remembering how you take your tea, they extend to the community around them. The same thoughtfulness that goes into waiting wine glasses goes into changing children’s lives.
A place named after love, living up to its name.
This commitment to community and genuine hospitality isn’t unique to Rasa Sayang – it’s woven into Shangri-La’s DNA. I experienced similar warmth at Shangri-La Rasa Ria in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, where the resort’s connection to local Bornean culture and nature conservation felt equally authentic. It’s what sets Shangri-La properties apart, they don’t just operate in a location, they become part of it.
What Hasn’t Changed
I thought maybe I’d built Shangri-La Rasa Sayang up too much in my head over the years. Memory does that – polishes things until they’re shinier than they ever were.
However, sitting here now, on this terrace, with my second coffee of the morning and the birds still singing, I can tell you: I didn’t imagine it.
This place still knows how to make you feel like you matter. Not because you’re paying for a luxury suite – plenty of places charge luxury prices…. but because someone remembered how you take your wine. Because the rain trees are still here, older and more patient than any of us. Because when you walk through the garden at dusk, you’re not thinking about your flight home or your inbox or whatever’s waiting for you in the real world.
You’re just here. Finally, completely here.
And maybe that’s worth a plaque on the door.
Traveller’s Tips
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang sits on Batu Ferringhi Beach, about 30 minutes from George Town’s UNESCO heritage area. You could spend your days exploring Penang. Or you could do what I did – relax and let the resort be the destination.
The Rasa Wing costs more, but what you get – high tea at 3 pm, canapés and free flow cocktails and wines after, breakfast in style, an adults-only pool makes it worth considering. Though even without it, you still get those rain trees, that genuinely caring staff, and the feeling of being somewhere that matters.
Solo travellers: you’ll be fine here. Better than fine. The staff at Shangri-La Rasa Sayang treat solo diners like they belong, not like they’re waiting for someone to join them.
How long should you stay? Long enough to stop thinking about what day it is. Long enough for the staff to remember your Earl Grey order. Long enough to understand why Wilma and Frederick kept coming back.
Book directly through Shangri-La Rasa Sayang for rates than booking sites, and you’ll get perks that matter.
📍Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa | Batu Ferringhi Beach, 11100 Penang, Malaysia | +60 4 888 8888
