Chancery Saigon All Suite Hotel: Like lukewarm or cold food - stay here
by Marthamaire
The rooms in this hotel are very large compared to other hotels I have stayed in. Actually, even the standard room is a suite. Separate room with table, sofa, chair, desk, and refrigerator. I got a standard room. The view was non-existent but who cares. Since I was staying for 11 nights, I requested a tub. There is an individual in-room safe and cable TV with a fairly decent selection of channels. Free internet is a major plus. Tea and coffee making facilities but more on that later.
The downside: the service in the restaurant, the breakfasts, housekeeping service, and the dinner menu. If you like everything cold or lukewarm, this is the place for you. Cold eggs, cold French toast, cold pancakes, lukewarm sausage. There is absolutely no consistency in the breakfast menu. One morning they will have numerous kinds of bread, pound cake, and Vietnamese sweet bread and the next day, for no apparent reason, all you get is plain white sandwich bread. The service is terrible. Breakfast starts at 6am and several times I entered the room to find the staff bringing out the food at 6:15 am. If an item has run out, like corn flakes or pancakes, good luck. You can wait up to ten minutes. Disorganization and plain lack of caring on the part of the waiters is painfully apparent.
I was leaving the maid a dollar tip every day. For that, the least she could have done is provide tea and sugar refills. I asked her several times, via hand gestures and holding up an empty sugar packet, for more supplies. She never, repeat never, refilled my supplies. I had to chase her down in the hall. I left a note for her. Yes, I understand she probably could not read English. The note was left on the pillow. She should have taken it to the front desk and asked what it meant.
The dinner “menu” is really really bad. The choice is so limited as to be nonexistent. And to top it off, the menu in the rooms is different than the one in the restaurant. Fried chicken breast turned out to be slices of bread coated rubber. The French fries were good though. No salads on the menu at all. I had to ask the cook to prepare a basic salad.
Almost every night I was there, there was a wedding. That means the restaurant and bar were off limits to guests. Incredible. A guard stood by the elevator to make sure I went to my room and did not try and sit down in the bar to have a drink.
After talking to an ex pat from America who has lived in Vietnam for five years, I now understand I got ripped off. I paid $55 night and he told me I could have gotten a nicer place, with a decent and hot breakfast, for less.
2.5 stars.
No outstanding characteristics.