Hotel Review for Thailand and Vietnam

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For anyone interested in how we liked our lodgings (or how I liked them since there were a lot of times I didn’t hear other opinions) here are all the places we stayed, and even websites to look them up.

Bangkok:

1. Veingtai Hotel
Website: www.viengtai.co.th
This place was ok. It wasn’t sensational, but it wasn’t bad either. It was in the backpacking/tourist area, which was nice. There are bunches of ATMs nearby, a bank, and shopping stalls. Breakfast was served in the hotel, and there’s a pool for anyone interested. By the elevator on the floor our rooms were all on there was a picture of a snowy scene with pine trees. Very ironic seeing as how it was above 90 degrees Fahrenheit the whole time we were there. The picture was very cute.

2. Bangkok Christian Guest House
Website: www.bcgh.org
This place was interesting. It’s by Silom Street in Bangkok. It is like the triple combination of a church/hospital/hotel. The rooms are very hospital like, with no televisions (but there is a television room you can watch movies in—that, or bring lots of books), there’s religious paraphernalia everywhere, breakfast is served, and you can get wake up calls. I liked their little gift shop. The gift shop is full of products made by hill tribe people and other groups. Mentally handicapped people also made some things they had there. They also sold things made by the McKean Treatment Center in Chiang Mai. As always, the profits from anything bought there go to those who made the products. I bought a coin purse made by Akha hill tribe women.

Kanchanaburi:

1. Christian University Student Housing
This really isn’t a hotel or inn, but we had the opportunity to stay there and I thought might as well talk about it too. For student living quarters, they weren’t too bad. They were spacious and had lots of room and separate bedrooms. Some college students here in the states would probably kill for housing like this. They even all had their own balconies (convenient for drying clothing too). And—as an added plus—the bedrooms are AIR CONDITIONED! Thank god.

Chiang Mai:

1. The Raming Lodge
Website: www.raminglodge.com
Despite the name, this is the best hotel EVER! I think this is probably the best place I’ve ever stayed in my entire life. Everything about this hotel was incredible—from the way it was designed, its location in Chiang Mai (lots of stuff to do nearby and the Night Market isn’t too far) right down to the double doors in the wall that opened into the bathroom. I would live there. Luckily, we stayed in that hotel the longest compared to any others on the trip, which rocked. The only even slightly bad thing that happened was my roommate and I had a little visitor one night—a little gecko on our ceiling. But he was cute and he didn’t do us any harm; you’ll have that in Thailand. I recommend this hotel to everyone, and from what I hear from Lora, it was really cheap to get rooms for our group. I don’t know if a group rate applied or what, but still check it out.

Halong City:

1. Sunlight Hotel
This place was all right. I really can’t say too much about it because we didn’t spend much time there during the days, and this was during our first few days in Vietnam. It wasn’t bad, but not exciting. We didn’t explore the area much either because this town bugged a lot of people. But I can tell you there was a lot of construction outside our window. The only negative thing that happened here was our fault, I think. My roommate tried to plug in her power converter (it turns out we didn’t need one—that was the problem) and blew the fuse for most of our floor. Ooops. The rooms were kind of humid too, and strangely enough, breakfast was on the eighth floor. I guess this was set up so people could see the wonderful view.

Hanoi:

1. Hoa Binh Hotel
This was my second favorite hotel on the whole trip, and the hotel the betel nut experiment was performed in. The hotel is European style (a carry over from French Imperialism) and has a wonderful 19th century nostalgic feel to it. Located in the French Quarter, it’s like your common older European hotel, with lots of small, winding hallways, and nice balconies and staircases. Hoa Binh is also a nice example of the wonderful architecture I was raving about in an earlier entry. Our room was nice too; we had a balcony (albeit a caged one) and a nicely decorated room. However, there were quite a few people in our group that didn’t like the hotel. Some had reasons such as it reminded them of the Outlook Hotel from the Shining, others thought it was haunted, and some others had more practical reasons for disliking it. One pair of girls had a room that didn’t have air conditioning, and ended up sleeping on the floor of another room until the hotel people finally moved them. Some other girls had to be moved because their room was overrun with ants. I must admit that was my only problem with our room. I left my backpack on the floor and ants found my bag of crackers I ate on in between meals. I was so angry!

Saigon:

1. New Epoch Hotel
This hotel was pretty awesome. It was one of the better ones we stayed in, I think. Again, we had a wonderful room, and an even better balcony than the Hanoi hotel. The rooms were spacious, they seemed clean, and our air conditioning worked well. Breakfast was on the ninth floor (?) I believe, and you had a pretty good view of the city. I bet it was even higher than the ninth floor because you could see a lot of the city from the dining area. The area it was located in also seemed like a good area. The hotel was conveniently located next to a convenience store. How convenient!

Overall, all of our lodgings were good ones. I would stay in them again if I went back.

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Comments

[Christopher]

Raming Lodge
I whole heartedly conquer that the Raming Lodge is the best place that I have ever stayed ANYWHERE. The best part of it was the price, it was rediculously cheap from what I hear.