We chose Bich Duyen Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, because of the stellar reviews on Tripadvisor.com. It met all our requirements for a hotel: clean, airconditioned, central, and most importantly, cheap. Double room was $18 including breakfast.

Of the five hotels we stayed in during our trip, this was the smallest–smallest bed, smallest bathroom, smallest room, but it was definitely big on value. Room has a fan, aircon, TV, ref, a tiny closet, and did I mention the complimentary breakfast? I don’t have a pic of our room without Abet in it.

Breakfast was basic, just the ubiquitous baguette, eggs, fresh dalandan juice, green bananas and coffee:

Of course, the coffee was the popular Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, which was very good. I was very pleased with the bananas, we used to have this everyday when we were still living in Cagayan de Oro, but I don’t think I’ve had this since we came to Manila. Breakfast wasn’t much it was good, and it saved us a few thousand dongs every morning.

The hotel is on Pham Ng? Lão, right smack in the backpackers’ area on District 1 (where most of the tourist attractions are) and is surrounded by bars, cafes, restaurants, banks, and street food stalls. Cho Ben Thành (Ben Thanh Market) is just within walking distance.

The manager, Chanh, was energetic, friendly, and extremely helpful. He arranged the Cu Chi Tunnels tour for us at 11pm, we were picked up at the hotel the next morning. He also arranged for a car to take us to the airport for $8 (pick-up from the airport is $14).

There’s a computer with high-speed internet at the lobby which you can use for free. We abused this on our last evening there when we were trying to get updates from friends in Manila about storm Santi and checking Cebu Pacific’s Twitter for updates regarding our flight.

I feel that at Bich Duyen, we got more than what we paid for. If I visit Saigon on a budget again , I’ll definitely stay here.

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