Vietnam Inn Saigon

I have a lot of travel backlog/drafts, so these are actually late posts, without any particular order anymore =P

For Justin's birthday, we decided to take a quick trip to Vietnam. When the kids aren't with us, we usually call it "backpacking", because we travel with backpacks and pick the cheapest possible hotels. I have this theory that what I save on hotels, I can spend on shopping, and since I book everything (plane tickets, hotels, tours), I can be very, very tipid. It takes me months sometimes to book a place for us, because I like to wait for deals and thoroughly read about the hotels in Agoda and Booking.com. 

Justin is NOT a fan of my strategy, and sometimes begs me to book nicer hotels. Admittedly, I have put us in some crappy places sometimes, and once we even ended up in a place in Hong Kong that looked like a bathroom with 2 beds in it. Haha! I only do that anyways when the kids aren't with us, I figure we're barely in the rooms anyways so sayang lang!

For our Vietnam stay, I booked Vietnam Inn Saigon, which had good feedback online. It was actually a backpacker's place, or a hostel (my fave cheapy place!) For 5 nights, we paid US $150. That came to P1,320 a night for a Superior Double Room, which is more than okay for me because we pay times 2-3 in SG and HK for hostels. 

We took the last flight out, and got to Vietnam around 1AM. It was very dark in Vietnam, and as we were winding around the dark streets, I was starting to worry about the place we got.

Upon arriving at the hostel, only the lights of the front desk were open, but we were acommodated by a very friendly attendant who spoke English that we could understand. We showed him our booking form, and he immediately checked us in. I crossed my fingers that the rooms were just clean, because that's alllll I really needed and hoped for.

Upon exiting the elevator, the lights of the floor were closed. Huhu. I guess it's like that in a hostel, they turn it off at night. However...

I was pleasantly surprised upon entering the room. It was quite large! Well, larger than the shoebox hostel rooms I'm used to!

Clean bed, clean linens, check!

Big room, minimalist design, and *gasp* a table?

Small flat screen tv (at least there was!) and ref

View from our room

I didn't take a photo of the bathroom, because there wasn't anything to see, haha! But the room was very simple and clean, with huge closets for bags, and a ref! We're grateful when hostels have refs because we always have leftover food, and like to snack sometimes when we get home.

The next morning, we woke up early to check the hostel's surrounding areas, and this is what we saw.

Tour buses park in front of our hostel. 

The hostel has a tour/travel agency in it's 1st floor that are INCREDIBLY cheap (think $6 for a whole day tour.) In front of the hostel are tour buses. On the tour that we took (a different day) they picked us up at our hostel. Incredibly convenient for us.

This is the front of our hotel. There are some chairs and tables in front ,I guess for foreigners to chill out at during evenings, but usually they're at the billiards room at night. The wooden chairs you see on top are part of the travel agency, fronting the hostel's front desk. They have snacks and drinks for sale too at regular price, which we got a lot of times because it was soooo hot!

The very clean, safe park

The best part of Vietnam Inn is that in front of it as a very large, very clean and safe park. When we walked around, people were exercising, ballroom dancing, kids were running around. It was so clean! There were no poor beggars chillin on the benches, if you know what I mean! Everyone was just merrily walking around, playing badminton, using the metal fitness playthingy exercise stuff that was installed into the park.

At night, this would not turn into some scary place, it would be filled with people playing street games. I admit that I did not expect Vietnam to look like this, and this park left me with such a positive impression of Ho Chi Minh.

Vietnam Inn Saigon is a pretty good place to stay. It was a 5 minute walk from the tourist road that housed a lot of bars and hostels favored by foreigners, and had yummy restaurants. It was a 20 minute walk away from Ben Thanh Market (though if you have a hard time walking in heat, I advice you to take a cab instead.)

I am DEFINITELY going back to Ho Chi Minh, and I would choose Vietnam Inn again because of it's very low rates, it's highly safe and clean area, and it's proximity to important parts of Saigon.

Vietnam Inn Saigon
200 Le Lai, District 1
Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
+84839254348