Alleyway Hostel — Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City

Pros|- Good location, quite central and close to restaurants/supermarkets and attractions||- Bed is clean and you get a duvet, two plugs and a light switch. Each bed also gets a large locker. Someone else commented that these were accessible by lifting the bed. I can confirm that for our dorm room, our lockers were secure. The bed planks were bolted down!||Cons|- Breakfast is super basic. Toast, eggs and two small pieces of watermelon. There are also only two super tiny tables to sit at meaning if it gets busy (e.g. more than 6 people), you have to stand.||- It says check in from 2pm. But at 5pm, our room was still not ready and we had to wait 30mins. (We had pre-booked in advance).. The laddy on reception was very rude, making out that she was doing as a massive favour to get the room ready...when we had paid and it was 3hrs after the official check in time! ||- On booking.com it shows you how many beds are available in each room. I specifically booked the room with less people and was instead put in the full room. This is normal practice for other hostels but was completely disregarded here. We also were taken past the room which we were meant to be in, which was empty!!||- The bathrooms are very dirty. The four or five times I showered, the cubicles always had rubbish in them. Even used sanitary pads and razors with long hairs in it which was disgusting! This might be down to the other guests but one time I pointed it out to a cleaner in the bathroom and three hours later what appeared to be the same objects were still there.||- The privacy curtains on the bunks might as well be non existent. They are very thin and see through.||- The WiFi once you go past the 2nd floor is terrible. A Google search took several minutes to load. Downloads were impossible.||- The remote for the A/C in the dorm room lives at reception. So every time the room becomes super cold, you have to go downstairs to ask to turn it down. ||- There is very little room in the dorms. There should be 6 beds rather than 8. As soon as one person opens their locker, the walkway is obstructed. Opening 2 lockers opposite to each other is a struggle. ||- The laundry is NOT as described on the poster. On the poster it says hand in the washing by midday and get it back by midnight for 40k dong per kg. However, in reality it is 24hrs+. It is convenient to have it done at the hostel but if you want a better price there were other places down the road doing it for 25k dong per kg for 24hrs. Also be careful if you're washing anything where the colour may run or if you're washing anything more expensive. At the bottom of the receipt you're given in small writing it says they are NOT responsible for either...

Pros|- Good location, quite central and close to restaurants/supermarkets and attractions||- Bed is clean and you get a duvet, two plugs and a light switch. Each bed also gets a large locker. Someone else commented that these were accessible by lifting the bed. I can confirm that for our dorm room, our lockers were secure. The bed planks were bolted down!||Cons|- Breakfast is super basic. Toast, eggs and two small pieces of watermelon. There are also only two super tiny tables to sit at meaning if it gets busy (e.g. more than 6 people), you have to stand.||- It says check in from 2pm. But at 5pm, our room was still not ready and we had to wait 30mins. (We had pre-booked in advance).. The laddy on reception was very rude, making out that she was doing as a massive favour to get the room ready...when we had paid and it was 3hrs after the official check in time! ||- On booking.com it shows you how many beds are available in each room. I specifically booked the room with less people and was instead put in the full room. This is normal practice for other hostels but was completely disregarded here. We also were taken past the room which we were meant to be in, which was empty!!||- The bathrooms are very dirty. The four or five times I showered, the cubicles always had rubbish in them. Even used sanitary pads and razors with long hairs in it which was disgusting! This might be down to the other guests but one time I pointed it out to a cleaner in the bathroom and three hours later what appeared to be the same objects were still there.||- The privacy curtains on the bunks might as well be non existent. They are very thin and see through.||- The WiFi once you go past the 2nd floor is terrible. A Google search took several minutes to load. Downloads were impossible.||- The remote for the A/C in the dorm room lives at reception. So every time the room becomes super cold, you have to go downstairs to ask to turn it down. ||- There is very little room in the dorms. There should be 6 beds rather than 8. As soon as one person opens their locker, the walkway is obstructed. Opening 2 lockers opposite to each other is a struggle. ||- The laundry is NOT as described on the poster. On the poster it says hand in the washing by midday and get it back by midnight for 40k dong per kg. However, in reality it is 24hrs+. It is convenient to have it done at the hostel but if you want a better price there were other places down the road doing it for 25k dong per kg for 24hrs. Also be careful if you're washing anything where the colour may run or if you're washing anything more expensive. At the bottom of the receipt you're given in small writing it says they are NOT responsible for either...

Bed Bug Alert. After I checked in, I layed down on the bed for less than an hour and I saw a bed bug on the curtain crawling towards me, the room light was on and my bed light was on when I spotted it, so this indicates there might be an infestation in the room because bed bugs tend to wait till lights are out and it is super late to come out to feed. This was an adult bed bug, meaning more are likely to be present.

What's even worst is how the hostel treated me after I told them about it, the person in charge tried to make me change beds and stay in the same room, as if only the bed I was laying in was the problem 😅🫢😬. I told him I'd like to change rooms because the room is the issue, not just the bed, because I had just arrived and I didn't even unpack my belongings yet.

I decided to let Agoda know since Alleyway Hostel wasn't taking the situation seriously -- they thought moving me rooms would solve their bedbug issue. After Agoda contacted them, they stormed into my room at 2:00 am and opened my privacy curtain when I was in my underwear and started yelling at me for contacting Agoda, not only did I feel extremely exposed being yelled at like a child in my underwear in the middle of the night, but I felt bad for the other guests in the room being woken up from the disturbance. I would have left immediately but it was 2:00 am so I was stranded, scared, and I felt unsafe both by the hostel and the room, so I slept with my bedside light on to not get biten. I couldn't wait to check out and move hostels the next day.

When a bed bug is found, you need to disinfect the room and take the proper precautions to mitigate the situation so bed bugs are not feeding on hostel guests and being transmitted to their belongings. Moving the person who found the bed bug to a new bed/room does nothing but keep that person for...