Bay Hotel - Ho Chi Minh City

Located in the north eastern part of the central district, right at the heart of Japan town, Bay Hotel is not the most centrally located hotel but their attractive pricing lead me to book my 2 weeks stay with them.

After a chaotic 1 hour ride from the airport, I arrived at the hotel fairly early but I was able to check in. The room I was given has a view of the Saigon river, towards the northeastern part of the city. The room is a fairly typical standard hotel room layout, the bathroom is located on the left as I enter the room with an open toilet layout as the door acts as both the shower door and toilet door, while you are able to shut the door to the toilet itself, it will not be a good idea when you're having a shower. A closet space is located on the right of the entrance with 2 bathrobes and slippers provided, a minibar setup is next to it, with complimentary minibar throughout my stay, a standard size safe and a mini fridge stocked with a selection of water, juices, soft drinks and a local beer.

Further into the room is a Queen size bed with a direct view of a fairly large size TV that has access to a number of international channels and local channels. Towards the end of the room is a standard size work desk with international plugs which is also installed on all the other plugs across the room which I really appreciate as I only have 1 adapter and it would be a bit of juggling to have to pull some plugs to charge other items taking up more time and effort.

As I settle down at the work desk to work out what to eat, I looked down toward the carpet and found a large size cockroach not really moving and I don't know when it came out which I was fairly sure wasn't there when I sat down. I called the reception and they sent a housekeeping staff to take it away and he was very apologetic, even bowing as he exits the room apologizing again. I also took the chance to look at the in room dining menu and ordered some stir fry vegetarian vermicelli and a plate of fries.

I went up to the rooftop pool to have a look shortly after, the water level was slightly lower than the drainage so there was no recirculation and bugs were floating all over. There was only one sun bed and it was very worn and it didn't feel too safe to be sitting on it, also someone left their towels on it for probably a fairly long period as there's not many staff coming up to this area to do regular maintenance. The second day they filled up the water and there were bubbles coming from within the pool which means the water is being filtered and is cleaner, and during the same night they had a private function in their rooftop bar which I suppose was the reason they filled it up and clean it up because after that the water level drained down to the level I saw on the first day and remained so for the rest of my 2 weeks stay.

They have a restaurant next to the reception serving breakfast, when I checked in I was advised that the restaurant will be open until 6pm but when I went there 30 minutes prior it was already shut, while I do understand they are not keeping it open when they do not have the demand for it, they should stick to the time they have advised the guests and fortunately there are some restaurants nearby that is easy to get to. On my first breakfast they were only doing a la carte style breakfast, and then after that day they started serving buffet style breakfast although I could only have the bakery section as the rest were all meat based, they did have an egg station on one of the busiest days but that's the only time I saw that was operating. While I wasn't able to consume the buffet food, they were able to replace it with the a la carte style food such as fried noodles or noodle soup, this was of no extra cost and given I have complimentary breakfast, this was covered for my entire stay.

The hotel was definitely running on limited capacity as there were renovations going on, or at least some floors were not being utilised when I accidentally pressed one of the wrong floors and from the darkness that's as much as I could see, the rooftop bar was not open to the public apart from private events, and the restaurant on the ground floor was only running during peak hours so their opening time varies daily. While I do understand that they needed to do that to survive during the low tourism season given the border was just open weeks prior, the pool section was definitely no excuse for the lack of maintenance and oversight when there are guests staying and paying to utilise those amenities. During check out the receptionist asked me whether I had any issues during my stay and I pointed out the pool and she told me I should have informed them so they could top it up, which is poor management practice if they need people to file a complaint in order for them to take action, and it's not like they never maintained it given they did do so during my 2nd night when they were hosting a private event.

Overall it was a comfortable stay, room was clean apart from that cockroach coming out of no where, I appreciated the complimentary minibar which was part of my status with Hotels.com program, staff were friendly and food was good when it was operating. I booked this hotel with a very high discount rate so I assume that they are desperate for cash during this challenging period, apart from not being able to fully utilise the pool for the majority of my stay, I could recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap, fairly central area to stay in during their trip to Ho Chi Minh City. Make sure to also check out my HCMC experience in a separate post coming soon.