Happy Town Homestay — Hotel in Hội An

Happy Town is a very nice place, but I cannot rate a room with no ventilation and no mosquito net (over bed or covering the window), which is the solution chosen by more and more hotels. I have no answer to give, because the solution doesn't make sense to me.

It's beyond me how other travelers cope with the mosquito situation. Are almost all travelers fooled into thinking that the AC will "condition" the air in the sense that it refreshes the air? It's hard to believe. I think people know that the AC is simply a cooling element with a fan. Replacing stale air needs to be taken care of by other means. (But a ventilation system is too expensive for the smaller hotels.)

Hotels with mosquito nets are few, but those few should in my opinion be strongly commended. Unfortunately, Happy Town is not one of them. How can so many tourists be happy and state that hotels are wonderful. I just hope to leave soon, to get a really good night's sleep again with both fresh air and without mosquitos, at our next destination, where we will sleep on the 15th floor. The mosquitos rarely reach that high up.

Nothing else is wrong with the rooms. Just get the mosquito problem solved (again). I visited Hoi An in 2014 and there were nets! It's like evolution has moved backwards in Hoi An (and other places with mosquitos). Now the towns require huge amounts of unnecessary electric power for the ACs, clearly a backwards step if we care about our planet!

I still give 5 stars (and no rating for the room), since the problem is not with this hotel in particular, the staff and owner are very nice and helpful people who mean so well. In fact, I write about this issue here because the homestay was so perfect in other ways, that it's such a shame that it was not perfect in every way.

The travelers could also bring their own nets, but it's difficult to use without a hook installed in the ceiling. I'd wish the government required all hotels to install hooks.

Modern technology has also given us the Mosquito Magnet (typically powered by propane gas) that can clear areas of tens of square meters of mosquitos. I'd prefer one of those over an AC. The situation today is a choice between sleeping with mosquitos or sleeping without fresh air, and both seem ridiculous to me. Most of all it's a mystery to me how other travelers seem totally unbothered about it.

The problem cannot be non-existent; for example in my country the (fresh) airflow required in bedrooms in new buildings is clearly specified.

I asked ChatGPT, here is an excerpt: "Many hotels assume tourists want AC and quiet, and will put up with stale air for a few nights.".

So the other tourists DO "put up" with it then? They are not actually completely happy...

This has been my favourite homestay so far (l've been travelling around SE Asia for the last four months!) The host family we're incredibly kind and thoughtful, and they really went above and beyond for us. We’re currently travelling as a group of five and arrived in Hoi An at 5:30am as our sleeper bus got in early. Not only did the hosts let us in but they also cleaned our rooms and gave us beds to lie down hours before check-in (we were exhausted!)

The rooms were immaculately clean and the mattresses were really comfortable. The shower in the bathroom was fantastic too! The homestay couldn't be in a more perfect location, down a quiet alley but still only 1 minute town from the old town!

We stayed for a week and the family were gave us so many recommendations for restaurants, tailors, beaches etc. They also organised extra bike hire for us and did our laundry. The breakfasts every morning were delicious too - the bananas pancakes with lemon and sugar were my personal favourite!

Thank you so much for having us all to stay and taking such good care of us! Everything was wonderful and we all felt so at home here… very sad to be leaving! We'd 100% return if we ever come back...

This guest house is awesome. The rooms are clean and the included breakfast was delicious. We all really liked the banana pancakes! There is a water filter available to use and we were served tea and snacks often. It’s an easy walk to old town and there are many nearby restaurants. The guest house is in a quiet alley. The family who runs it went out of their way to help us book the right rooms for our family and even changed our room when some other guests left to give us a better experience. They had great recommendations about food, tailors, spas, beaches and getting around. They even helped us book a driver to take us to a river bridge show in Danang when we had a really late flight out and gave us snacks for the journey. I would definitely stay...