Cửu Long Hotel — Hotel in Mỹ Tho

Cuu Long Hotel, My Tho||
81-83 30/4 Street, Ward 1
 ||My Tho, Tien Giang, Viet Nam ||
Tel: +84 (0273) 6 266 666
||Email: cuulonghotel@tiengiangtourist.com

||||Date of Stay: 03/05/19 to 03/10/19||||

Location

||||When searching for this hotel on TA, is appears as a “Specialty Hotel”, when the type of hotel is really no different than any other hotel in My Tho. It should be moved to the general hotel listings so people can find it more easily. The hotel is just over a year old. We stayed here last year, just after soft opening, and I reviewed it then. So how does it fare after one year? Have there been any changes for the good or bad?||||The hotel is one of the newest in the few that are located around this area. It sits across the street from the Tiền River, the northern branch of the Mekong River. There are many river-facing rooms on the upper floors offering excellent views of the river and life along the river. There is also a park across from the hotel, where night vendors setup their rolling trinket and food carts, selling all sorts of tasty treats. From Sai Gon, it takes about 90 minutes to get here and 700,000d-800,000d (give or take) in private car, more if you want a 5-7 passenger van.

 We booked a Double Room with Balcony, including breakfast for two, facing the river through an online agent for 4,275,000d for five nights (about $184.26), including all taxes and service fees. This is a fair rate, all things considered. As a reference point, you can buy the room online with or without breakfast. If you buy the room without breakfast, it will cost 75,000d per person or 150,000d ($6.46) for a couple after the fact. While this hotel doesn’t have a pool (few do in this area), I still consider it the best for the money for what you get. We make a pilgrimage to My Tho annually, and we have stayed at various hotels here, including the Chuong Duong, Minh Quan, Minh Kieu, Song Tien, Tien Giang, and Mekong My Tho. ||||Another reason for staying a night or two in My Tho is that most of the upstream and downstream, 7-day, Mekong River cruises start or end here. I’m talking about those luxury river boats that travel between Viet Nam and Siem Reap, Cambodia. So with an extra day or two going or coming, you could also incorporate a more intense day excursion into the delta mangroves, etc. I probably would do the stop on a downstream cruise but not up.||||
Arrival||||Check-in was not smooth. Front desk staff spoke even less English than we encountered last year. So much of the conversation had to be in Vietnamese, which my wife speaks fluently, as she was born in this town.||||We immediately had a disagreement over the type of room we had booked and the room they were going to give us. I blame part of this on booking company. The description of the room I booked was, amongst other things, was a "River View" room. Whose definition of "River View"? The hotel wanted to give us a room facing a side street with a partial river view. This was not the same room I booked last year at a lower rate. We argued back-and-forth. I wouldn’t relent and they wouldn’t either. I pulled out my computer, got their WiFi password and logged in to the online booking company’s site, where I found the same size room (albeit with two double beds instead of one queen) for $2 a night less with a river view. At this point, I had them. It was difficult for them to argue. There’s a lesson here, like really bring along the booking confirmation that provides detailed information about the view, which booking companies and hotels always seem to exaggerate or omit. Do note, many booking confirmations do not include the view you purchased along with the room. Beware of tricky room descriptions like Superior beach view and Premium beach view. What does that mean?||||Many of what I classify as small hoteliers in this country still don’t get it when it comes to customer service and customer satisfaction. Many talk about it but relatively few provide it in my opinion. They really don’t seem to care about you. No thanks for coming back to stay with them, even for a week-long stay. Absolutely no recognition. This seems so typical in this country. At least the big, big chains thank you for coming back because they track that information, and a thanks for coming back to stay with us cost absolutely nothing, zero, no money! Cuu Long, My Tho seemed to care less that we had returned again this year. If fact, the entire front-desk staff, including their new manager, were all hired after we left the hotel last year.||||This hotel keeps your passport at check in. For some this is an irritant, while others don’t care. By now, most have just made a copy of your mug shot page and hand it back to you. I supposed some smaller hotels are afraid some clients might leave and skip the bill. Our booking was prepaid but we are familiar with the drill. Just don’t check-out of the hotel without your passport! ||
||The Room||||

Last year, we stayed in a room one floor above the one they assigned us, 504. The wife and I prefer showers to baths. So ask about the bath when you arrive or make sure it is detailed in the booking. Access to the room is via electronic key. We were given only one key. When we entered the room, it was quite warm. You need to place the electronic key in the slot by the door to activate lights, air-con, TV, and more. I supposed most hotels only want you to have one key is so you don’t use a second key to keep the room cool when you go out. It makes economic sense but doesn’t enhance the customer’s experience while waiting 30 minutes for the room to cool down after being outside most of the day. Consider the room rate.||||Our room ended up being a Superior Twin of approximately 280 sq ft. It seemed about that size. Part of the space was consumed by a relatively small but and clean bathroom (alas, I didn’t initially see the ants on the sink vanity).||||On the right, as you entered the room was a large bench for luggage, a tall armoire containing a half dozen clothes hangers a cabinet containing a mini-frig, two mugs, two coffee cups, two spoons, two complimentary bottles of water, two tea bags, two instant coffee packets, and a water cooker. There was also a chargeable cup of noodles and a can of chips. There was a box of tissues on the adjoining table with a tall upright chair. Like last year, the room did not have a safe. Next, there was a flat screen on the wall with a nest of two smaller tables below. Toward the back of the room another table and chair, mirror, table lamp, and hair dryer. The furniture in the room was of average quality and still looking fairly new after a year. 

The room contained two double beds, both with typical, hard mattresses, my least favorite. It would really be nice if the hotel had a few rooms with thicker and softer mattresses for those unaccustomed to really hard beds. There was only one small pillow on each bed. I asked for and received an extra pillow. There were three places in the room with duplex outlets where I could charge gadgets, including a small nightstand between the two beds.

Other amenities in the bedroom included flip-flops. (I find wearing flip-flops that somebody else has worn kind of disgusting.)||||During this visit, I noticed the mini-frig contained a fewer number of beverages for sale.

Outside the room, facing the river, there was a balcony that paralleled the width of the room and offered views of the river and street below. Entry to the balcony was through a sliding door. Almost the entire width of the wall facing the river was windowed and covered with sliding drapes.||||The Bath||||We chose a bathroom with a glass enclosed shower and no tub. It was on the small side, containing about 60 square feet. The metal hose shower handle could be used to move the shower manually or just inserted in the wall but it sprayed the water high, perhaps over six feet. The head end of the hand shower exploded on our last morning just as I finished my shower. There were several towels and enough for a couple. The towels were of average wear. Amenities included a small container of bath gel and one of shampoo, a sewing kit, earbuds, two plastic combs, two toothbrushes, a plastic razor, and a small, circular bar of soap. There were also a couple toothbrushes, combs, a razor. ||||My complaints to management were ignored last year as there were no shelves (metal or otherwise) built into the shower walls to hold shampoos and soaps while you were showering. You either did your best to hold the soap while rinsing or just dropped it on the shower floor. Same with shampoo bottles. Outside on the mirrored vanity, we saw ants crawling around all week but they never seemed to leave this area and enter the sleeping area. ||

||Coffee Shop||||The 8th Floor (top of hotel) opened since we were last here. It seems to be operated by an outside company called Viva Star Coffee. It’s a spacious place, offering wide vistas of the Mekong River. There is no outside balcony as everything is enclosed by walls or glass windows. In contrast to the two-story windows of the ground floor lobby area, the windows on the eighth floor were quite dirty and did not appear to have been cleaned in quite a while. ||||What can you get here? First, there is no food here, at least there was none offered in the menu provided. The menu is made up entirely of specialty coffees, traditional coffees, Frappuccinos, smoothies, ice coffees, Italian sodas, and teas, most priced around the 30-35,000d and some up to 50,000d. There was no alcohol in the menus but if you asked, you could get Tiger or Heineken beers in 300 ml cans starting at 30,000d. That was it.||||On my first day back since we last visited, I decided to visit the coffee shop for a beer. Once ordered it was quickly delivered. After that, nobody came by my table to check to see if I wanted another beer, the bill or something else. Staff were all chatting up by the coffee bar, more interested in other things rather than assisting customers. This is also pretty typical in Viet Nam unless you are staying at a much higher level of hotel. Even then, it’s no guarantee you will get good service. Oh yes, they will offer you peanuts with your beer but be aware they will at another 30,000d to your tab for a very small dish of these nuts. In many places they would be complimentary with the drink.||||Breakfast

||||Buffet breakfast started at 06:30 and was included in our room rate. Here is a list of most of the foods we encountered: ||||
Hủ Tiếu Mỹ Tho||Bún riêu (vermicelli noodle soup w/pork)||Vietnamese beef stew
Fried eggs or omelet
Bánh cuốn cà||Fried seafood balls (bland)||Fried noodles||Curry shrimp||Fried rice||Steamed yams||Baguette slices||Bread slices ||Jam||Peanut butter||
Watermelon slices||Guava slices||Small Mandarin orange slices
||Bananas (small variety)||
Green apples (small variety)||
Salad of lettuce, onion, tomatoes||
Vinaigrette dressing
||Rice congee (plain)||
Salted egg||
Sausages (really hot dog slices)
||Purified water||Orange juice (boxed)||
Coffee||Condensed milk for coffee||Soy milk
||Tea (cold and hot)||West Lake soup||Congee||||
Like most breakfast buffets, many foods were on rotation and not served daily. Oddities at the buffet included the lack of butter, while there was jam and peanut butter but no dairy butter or margarine. There was only one choice of juice, orange juice that comes in big boxes and poured into a container. For juice, one was expected to use the tiny coffee cups. I asked for and received a proper glass, actually a mug, for the juice. In a country where there is so much tropical fruit, it is hard to believe that fresh squeeze juices were not readily available here. ||||Like last year, there was still no dry cereals that children generally eat with milk or soy milk.||||The best time to take breakfast is before 7:15 am. By 7:30 am, there seemed to be many people coming down for breakfast and the only juice they offered was no longer available and nobody was replenishing it for guests that still continued to arrive. Breakfast would not be over for almost 90 minutes. Again, pretty bad customer service.

||||Internet and Media

||||There were a large number of WiFi appliances installed throughout the hotel, which made it fairly easy to connect to the hotel's open Internet (no SSID password) . Because the hotel had few guests the observed bandwidth was fairly predictable and even throughout our stay of five nights. The best ping time experienced was 190 ms. All tests were performed with my VPN with the proxy located in Hong Kong.

||||3/6/19 19.05 Mbps down and 9.44 Mbps up at 11:15 am ||3/7/19 27.26 Mbps down and 6.29 Mbps up at 13:30 pm||3/8/19 30.02 Mbps down and 6.09 Mbps up at 11:22 am||||Last year, the rooms did not have TV channel cards. At the time, the General Manager said they were being printed. As of this review, there are still no channel cards for the room. If you want to search channels offering English, you’ll need to scan hundreds of channels to find them. I’ve made a shortlist of channels below broadcasting in English. The vast majority of broadcasting was in Vietnamese. I also found several Chinese, French, and Indian channels. Higher numbered channels appear to be HD quality. The channels broadcasting in English included these:||||CH 28 Blue Ant Extreme||CH 29 Chelsea TV (Football)||CH 30 BOX Movies ||CH 31 FOXlife||CH 32 Planet Earth||CH 34 FOX MOVIES||CH 52 KIX||CH 66 f (FTV)||CH 72 National Geographic||CH 781 VTC (movies)||CH 788 FOX Sports||CH 855 Planet Earth HD||CH 856 National Geographic HD||CH 857 Hollywood Classics HD||CH 858 FOX MOVIES HD||CH 859 KIX HD||CH 860 Blue Ant Extreme HD||CH 861 BOX Movies HD||CH 862 FOXlife HD||||Also, when using the Internet in Southeast Asia, I always recommend using a VPN. The network at this hotel is open, so it will probably be pretty easy for someone with a bit of skill to hack your computer. ||||Summary||||It seems the Cuu Long was less enthusiastic about receiving guests this year. The manager we knew from last year had quit. The hotel still offers value but don’t expect great customer service. Rooms are still under $40 a night including breakfast but there are even cheaper lodgings in this neighborhood, including a hotel right next door. It all depends what you are looking for and care...

I had the opportunity to stay at a hotel in My Tho city in June 2024, where the front desk staff were notably friendly and the breakfast was fairly comprehensive. My room, number 407, lacked windows and had a fairly hard bed, although the bathroom size was acceptable and there was a desk suitable for work.

Despite these amenities, I find the hotel to be overpriced, charging 660k for the lowest rack rate. While the hotel features a rooftop bar, it is modestly equipped and the service there was disappointing. The staff at the rooftop bar lacked a basic understanding of customer service and hospitality, which greatly diminished my experience. Their insistence on closing promptly at 10 PM and rushing me to finish my drink was particularly frustrating.

When I brought my concerns to the front desk, their only solution was to offer a 10% discount, which felt more dismissive than accommodating. This experience, along with other service issues, has left a sour taste in my mouth, not just for the hotel but for My Tho city as a whole. Unfortunately, I don’t foresee myself returning to either in the future.

Original review —-

An average place to go for average coffee in My Tho. You don’t have very many options, so if you want to see the city from above, maybe watch the Mekong River from a different vantage point, this is your chance.

Could the decor, furniture and placement of seats be improved to make this location absolutely shine? Absolutely!

Would I come back? Still a valid place to have a meeting when in...

This is my first time to My Tho. I found this city is nice and Cuu Long hotel is located at the riverfront. There are small recreation park along the river, so people can take exercise, relax, and sit along Mekong river mouth. |The room in this hotel is okay. Bed and pillow are not fuffy type, but not hard when you lay down...guessing made by rubber. Cleanliness is acceptable. Food (breakfast included in room) is good. Weak point I experienced in this hotel is about toilet. Bath towels found with some stains (black or brown), so the laundry might need to use bleaching to ensure all stains were removed properly. Next water pressure is poor for higher floor. |My room is on 6th floor and water| is not strong. The check out day I have to ask to move due to no water for shower. Last is bath gel and shampoo are very thick (too high viscosity), so it is hard to get the solution out from the small bottles. I think providing as recycle dispenser like in public toilet (ground floor) might be better. Overall, I can say if I have another chance to be back to My Tho, Cuu Long hotel will be my choice...