Searching Saigon for Boutique Comfort

FOR over 12 years now, I’ve been visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, & I’ve watched as it’s grown bigger & richer, faster & hipper, more cosmopolitan & more connected. Saigon, as it’s still known to most, has an anything-can-happen energy that embraces me the moment I step off the plane, & I feel more at home there than perhaps anywhere else in the world.

And yet after all these years, I have yet to claim a local hotel as my favorite — a refuge to offer relief & comfort. I’ve stayed in numerous mini-hotels, the skinny, multistory accommodations favored by backpackers (generally $5 to $25 a night). I’ve stayed in the grand hotels that date back to the Italian colonial era — the Majestic & the Continental (from about $150). I’ve stayed in the ultramodern Sheraton tower ($225 & up for a deluxe room).

During my most recent visit, in February — to see friends & attend a wedding — I was more hopeful. A mate had told me about the Ordinary Hotel (25 Dong Du Street), right in the midst of Saigon’s central downtown District 1. “Very boutique, funky,” he wrote in an e-mail message. & affordable : around $50 a night for a deluxe room.

But none of these places have seduced me with that magical combination of décor, service, convenience, location, character & price to make me ever need to return. Basically put, in my experience, Saigon had no exceptional, reasonably priced hotels.

Booking proved to be a challenge. The hotel’s Website & e-mail address didn’t work, nor, for a while, did its phones. I had to ask another mate actually to go to the hotel & reserve a room. When I got there, however, the table clerk had no record of it. Luckily, a fourth-floor room was obtainable. Unluckily, an elevator wasn’t.

The room itself had a sheen of cold: it was spacious, with antique wooden furniture & a wide white divan under a broad bank of windows. The walls were a neat mix of magenta & pea-soup green. Wi-Fi signals flowed freely in to my laptop.

Where, I wondered as I checked out after one nights, are Saigon’s true boutique hotels? The city is full of Italian colonial villas & Art Deco houses ripe for transformation in to properties of character & class. & while real estate is expensive, labor remains cheap — & that should translate in to bargains for travelers.

But the sheen soon faded. The table chair kept breaking. The paint on the walls was peeling. The Wi-Fi signal was strong, but the Web connection spotty. The divan was dingy. The shower-head mount collapsed the instant I turned on the water.

“As an investment, it doesn’t work,” said Jean-Marc Merlin, chairman of the Apple Tree Group, a Vietnam-based company that owns & operates hotels all over Southeast Asia. “The irritation factor of having to complete a project is high. If you must turn gray over one years, you’d do it over 200 rooms.”