Get the most out of Vietnam's biggest city by choosing a great base: from Graham Greene's old haunt to a boutique bolthole with views over the Saigon river
A pocket of France in a remote corner of Ho Chi Minh City, Ma Maison is a welcoming place to stay, run by a French-speaking Vietnamese family. The tall, grey-hued guesthouse towers over an alley scattered with banh mi stalls, tailors, food kiosks, and locals crowded around TVs. Behind the guesthouse door, there's a sense of being transported away from the city, with Provençal furniture, farmhouse tables, vases of blooming flowers, croissants for breakfast, and a soothing, quiet calm. Rooms in muted pastel tones are cosy with super-comfortable beds; the bathrooms, with rain showers, are perfumed by cinnamon sticks, lemongrass and mother of pearl shell. Ma Maison is quite a hike from the centre of town but don't let that be a deterrent. Just a few minutes' walk from Ma Maison, and recommended by its staff, is a local bó ba lot restaurant, where the sight of a foreigner is still a rare thing. Feast on a fill of beef wrapped in betel leaf, a stack of rice paper, a huge pile of herbs, noodles and peanuts, and all for just £1. Ma Maison's filling breakfast pho is also worth the wait.
• 656/52 Cach Mang Thang Tam Street, +84 8 3846 0263, mamaison.vn, doubles from £52 B&B
2. Thao Dien
Village
An alluring tropical retreat, Thao Dien Village is enveloped by frangipani trees, and is a 15-minute drive from downtown Saigon. Saigon is a busy, noisy and congested city but this inviting hotel offers peace, a swimming pool, spa and a Vietnamese restaurant all facing the Saigon river in District 2. Superior rooms are all monochrome sleek with chalk-white walls, grey velvet headboards, crisp white sheets and black lamps dangling with droplets of shells by French designer Valerie Gregori McKenzie, founder of boutique store Song. Begin the day with a breakfast of eggs and strong Vietnamese coffee, seated on a terrace overlooking the river, and end it at the lemongrass-perfumed spa with a relaxing herbal, hot stone, mud or chocolate treatment.
• 189-197, 197/1 Nguyen Van Huong Street, +84 8 3744 6457, thaodienvillage.com, doubles from £103 B&B
3. Cinnamon Hotel
The charming Cinnamon offers all the style and comfort of a more expensive Saigon hotel at half the price. It is a short walk from central Bến Thành Market in District 1, its manicured Asian interiors feature dark wooden floors and furniture, desks, coatstands, colourfully tiled bathrooms with tubs and showers, and lamps encased in fishing baskets. You may want to avoid street-facing rooms for the noise, although heavy wooden doors and window shutters muffle sounds. Breakfasts of pho, or banana pancakes laced with Mekong Delta honey, taken in the small breakfast room in the lobby, are delicious. As well as breakfast, one cocktail or mocktail, and one foot massage is included in the stay.
• 74 Le Thi Rieng Street, +84 8 3926 0130, cinnamonhotel.net, doubles from £40 B&B
4. The Alcove Library Hotel
There's nothing else quite like it in Ho Chi Minh City. French colonial-style tiling in floral swirls of black, and taupe in the boutique-chic lobby supports impressive floor-to-ceiling library bookcases stacked with an eclectic mix of books. The Alcove is closer to the airport than the city, and you'll have to factor in travelling times to downtown on busy weekend nights, but it's quiet and the beds are supremely comfortable, so you may want to indulge in a lie-in, thus missing the 9.30am breakfast cut off. But when you do, wander upstairs to the industrial-chic Roadhouse bar and restaurant, a breakfast of eggs, toast, jams, fruits, fresh coffee and the tastiest yoghurt in Saigon awaits. Fresh coffee and tea served to your door is a thoughtful touch after a full day's sightseeing.
• 133A Nguyen Dinh Chinh Street, +84 8 6256 9966, alcovehotel.com.vn, doubles from £54 B&B
5. Little
Saigon Boutique Hotel
Hitched to
the bottom end of a long alley in a very central downtown location, this tiny
hotel offers creature comforts and a central city experience. Outside its front
door locals sell banh mi (Vietnamese baguettes), eat, chat and drink coffee in
the popular cul-de-sac. A stone's throw from city hall and other central
sights, the lantern-decorated hotel, run by welcoming Vietnamese staff, offers
super-soft pillows, silk bathrobes, pouffes and tables for taking coffee, and
balconies overlooking the higgledy-piggledy French colonial and glassy, modern
city skyline.
• 36 Bis/2 Le
Loi Boulevard, +84 8 3521 8464, littlesaigon.com.vn, doubles from £18 B&B
6. Hotel
Sanouva
This slick Ho
Chi Minh city hotel, just behind popular Bến Thành Market, oozes confidence in
its smart, grownup rooms. Think brushed-cotton chairs, plump pillows, firm
mattresses and long desks, all in a palette of moleskin and white. Ly Tu Truong
Street is packed with hotels all looking much of a muchness. This is the
standout on this popular District 1 stretch. It's also close to one of the
city's best cafes, the boho I.D. Café, with its bare brickwork, 1960's
furniture and tasty milkshakes. If you stay more than three nights at the
Sanouva, a complimentary transfer to the airport is included.
• 177 Ly Tu
Trong Street, +84 8 3827 5275, sanouvahotel.com, doubles from £43 B&B
7. Saigon
River Boutique Hotel
Ho Chi Minh's
hotel scene lacks innovation but this new Vietnamese-Australian venture is
brilliantly located for sights, eating, drinking and shopping, and has been
attractively re-fashioned from a 1980s narrow building with a bright-white
sculptural facade depicting a multi-branched tree. Rooms are mostly creatively
decorated – red, stone and lemon-yellow pouffes, sleek silver-and-white wallpaper,
chic chairs, and contemporary photography framed on the walls. Bathrooms
feature wonderful hot tub showers, and standard rooms, which do not have
windows – not an uncommon feature in the city's hotels – have been enhanced by
mirrored walls. Although a couple of blocks from Saigon river, guests can watch
the boats from the top-floor terrace.
• 58 Mac Thi
Buoi Street, +84 8 3822 8558, saigonriverhotel.com, doubles from £21 B&B
8. Ruby River
Hotel
The Ruby
River, with its upbeat contemporary feel, sits in an ideal location for
shopping and the arts. The District 1 hotel is close to the famous Le Cong Kieu
aka "antique street", and the Fine Arts Museum, and a short xe ôm
(motorcycle taxi) ride to Bến Thành Market and the backpacker zone of Pham Ngu
Lao. As well as their prime location, superior rooms are quiet and modestly
decorated in chocolate browns and white. Silver dandelions, or roses in Charles
Rennie Macintosh-style, climb the walls; sharp bathrooms are compact with
powerful rain showers. Ruby deluxe rooms are a better bet as they feature
windows overlooking the street, and the bathrooms come with hot tubs.
• 59-61
Nguyen Thai Binh Street, +84 8 3914 3636, rubyriverhotel.com.vn, doubles from
£35 B&B
9. Hotel
Catina
Graham Greene
knew this was a good spot; he took rooms in the 1950s in the smart, snappy
white building that is now the modern Hotel Catina. It's on Dong Khoi (the old
Rue Catinat under French rule), the city's main downtown shopping street. Once
you pass the lobby – a glitzy, glassy jewellery shop – the upstairs rooms are
quiet, feature discreetly positioned TVs, and have alcoves with desks and
coffee-making facilities. Graham Greene was all for people-watching vantage
points so he would have approved of the breakfast room with its tall windows
overlooking Dong Khoi. The Catina is ideal for the shopaholic, the barfly, and
the 21st-century flaneur.
• 109 Dong
Khoi, +84 8 3829 6296, hotelcatina.com.vn, doubles from £68 B&B
10. The Town
House
Tucked at the
end of a quiet Saigon hem (alley), and with helpful young Vietnamese staff,
this new addition to the Ho Chi Minh hotel scene is great value. The Town House
combines its small-hotel-meets-hip-hostel ambience with bold, attractive
interiors. Architects Huy Than and Le Ha An have fashioned the cul-de-sac
building into an inviting place to stay with twin, double, family and dormitory
rooms, using French blue interiors, pretty stencilling, bamboo towel ladders
and old French colonial tiles. The lobby leads to the breakfast area, decorated
with tropical greenery, and illuminated by orange and blue Chinese lanterns,
and a mini kitchen where guests can make their own packed lunches. A magazine
rack, computers and Wi-Fi, plus a shower room for guests who have already
checked out, complete the winning formula.
• 50E Bùi Thị
Xuân, +84 8 3925 0210, townhousesaigon.com (website under construction),
doubles from £20, dorms from £5.50 B&B
From : www.theguardian.com
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