Cara Hotel

Modern & Comfy but Mind Your Air-Conditioning!

It's a relatively new 3star hotel, started just in mid-2006. We had booked the luxury room with balcony directly with the hotel for USD40/night for twin sharing plus choice of breakfast & 2 330ml bottles of drinking water.

The room was big (maybe about 35sqm) with 2 full size beds, plenty of room for our 2 hard-case luggages and lots of space still. There's cable tv and fridge and the restroom is big too.

One thing we didn't like about our stay there was the air-conditioning. First, we had problems turning it on even after changing batteries for the remote. Secondly & most importantly, when we came back to the hotel room in the (hot) afternoon after lunch, we found our air-conditioning off!

We found out later that everytime we turned in our keys to the receptionist & left the hotel, they would turn off the main electric power to our room so that everything in there goes off! Imaging coming back into a hot stuffy room after a hot day out. We were definitely not happy about that especially when we paid USD40 per night for the room!

To get around that, we decided to take the room key with us & not let them spot us going out of the hotel so that they will leave the electric power on.

One more incident that maybe hotel guests should just watch out for - when my final bill came, they had charged us for a bottle of Evian water which we did not open. They insisted that we did & we asked to see the bottle which was opened, but definitely not by us as we bought our own drinking water. We just refused to pay.

As the hotel's restaurant was under renovations, we had to go to the restaurant next door for breakfast. Though it's not buffet style, they have plenty of selections, both local & western, & choice of beverage. I tried the beef noodle soup which was pretty good, & the fried chicken (a tad dry) with rice. Avoid the sandwiches unless you're a really light eater. My friend had a sandwich & it was such a small portion. Better to opt for the omelette as it comes with a nice big baguette.

Unique Quality: Nice modern decor, friendly & helpful staff. You can ask them to help you book bus tickets at no extra cost. They helped us to get the Mekong Express Bus tickets at cost price. The receptionists were really nice even after that Evian water incident.

I feel that the hotel is quite centrally located. Everything's within 5-10mins drive away.

Try booking through www.directrooms.com for a slightly cheaper rate (think it's around USD37-38 for the room we got). I only went direct to the hotel as directrooms came back to me that the hotel is fully booked. Obviously they limit the rooms booked via other website so that they can charge higher prices for direct bookings. Room rates, listed on their website, ranges from USD25 to USD40 depending on type of room and occupancy.

We had a peek of the standard twin room without balcony & it does look a bit cramp. So you might want to opt for at least the Deluxe room. We did see some people sitting out in their balcony but we didn't as the weather was extremely hot & our room was facing west. Ask for a higher floor as there's a karaoke/disco place just around the corner & we were on the 2nd level of rooms (which is actually the 3rd floor) & could even hear the singing. Not good for light sleepers.