Thus small hotel has a big heart. I am just completing a 12 night stay as a repeat guest following my 8 day visit one year ago. All the staff get high marks for friendliness and excellent service. Hotel housekeeping continues to be of a high standard. Anh (pron. Ann), Gabi and Vee (pron. Vay) at reception have good English skills and bend over backwards every day to make guests comfortable and to help with answering questions, offering advice and arranging excursions. The other staff members do not speak Englilsh but this doesn't create any problem.

Hotel has a perfect location on a quiet alley about 150 metres from the busy Pham Ngu Lao (Street). It is quiet for sleeping yet only a 2 - 5 minute walk from many restaurants and bars and an abundance of transportation such as taxis, motorbike taxis and cyclos. In the alley and directly in front of the hotel there is a busy street market that operates at full throttle every morning, opening around 7 AM and closing about noon. Many of the shop houses across from and beside the hotel offer a wide variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and fish. The 'buzz' of this market is wonderful to experience and, if you are into people-watching, you will really savour the authentic neighbourhood commerce that takes place here.

The hotel rooms, numbering 11 and spread over 6 floors are all nicely appointed with comfortable beds, large flat screen TV, free WIFI, fridge, large glass-enclosed shower, hair , dryer, basic toiletries,tea/coffee making equipment, good air conditioning and a computer desk. Some rooms have small balconies and some do not have windows. Most rooms are fairly spacious, however, the room located on ground level at the back of the dining area, is small, has no windows and is the least costly to say in. There is no elevator in the hotel so access to the rooms is by stairs. There is always a male staff member on hand to carry luggage to and from your room so the absence of a lift isn't a big issue unless one is physically impaired.

As the hotel may present a problem for some taxi drivers to find it is advisable that you carry a map and that you have the hotel phone number readily available. in the event the taxi driver needs to phone the hotel for direcdtions.
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The small reception area is licated on the mezaanine one floor above street level. There is a computer here for guests.

A free breakfast is served between 7 and 10 AM in the ground floor dining area. Breakfast is very basic but adequate to launch you for your day's activities,

Everything considered, this hotel is good value and offers most everything a traveller would require. i wouldn't hesitate to recommend the hotel to any visitor to HCMC. It\s a beaut !!

After having a not so great experience in a budget hotel in Singapore 2 days before we came to HCMC, we were quite wary of what we will find in HCMC – as the price we paid for Cat Huy is bordering on nothing ($32/night). We have already pre-booked our hotels months before we went on our trip, so we couldn’t really do anything about it. However, we booked it because of the many great reviews we have read about it – even better than the pricier hotels.

We pre-booked a hotel pick up from the airport to the hotel, and this was about $6 to be paid to the hotel. We didn’t realize though, that the hotel is located in an alley which is not accessible by a car. My partner and I had 2 pieces of luggage each, and though someone from the hotel met us where the car dropped us off, it was a challenge to drag our luggage through the alleys. The alleys were wet and quite dirty from the markets selling fish, pork, chicken and vegetables.

Upon arriving at the hotel, our fear of a repeat of our Singapore experience was not allayed. We didn’t realize that the hotel had no elevators until we got there – so our luggage had to be carried up a narrow staircase up to our room on the 4th floor. We didn’t carry them ourselves, a hotel staff did - but we felt so sorry for him as he was quite small and the luggage were really heavy.

So it was with great surprise when we finally got to our room and saw that the size belied the exterior. The room was bigger than we initially thought – there was a divider between the bedroom and the hallway which led to a very tiny balcony. The actual bedroom area had good space, enough to have a small table for tea near the bed, and for all our luggage to be laid out on the floor. I think the bed was a king size, and it was extremely comfortable. The room was very clean, and though the decorations were not fancy, they were certainly very pleasant – overall definitely worth more than what we paid for. The bathroom was also a good size though basic.

Breakfast was included in the price we paid (I cannot imagine how!) – but we never got to have one at the hotel as all our tours already included an early pick up and breakfast.
The staff were genuinely friendly and helpful – they made calls for us to confirm our tour details with tour operators.

From the hotel, it was a short walk to the main road (<50meters)– shorter than the one where the hotel pick up car dropped us before. We still passed through some small market stalls, the alley is perpetually wet from the market – so do not wear white if you don’t want mud splashes on your shorts/shirt from the motorcycles passing through. There are many choices once you are on the main road, and it is easy enough to get a cab if you don’t feel like walking. On coming back at nights, we found that the street was adequately lighted – so it wasn’t as scary as we thought it would be.

Overall, I would recommend this hotel as it is very good value for money for those on a budget but would still like comfort – the rooms are good, the staff is friendly and helpful; but location was a compromise - and I would personally want a more central hotel in my future stays in HCMC.

We had a great time at Cat Huy and ended spending 3 more nights here. The location is down a small alley on the main tourist road, so it is very quiet and relaxing. The rooms were very clean and had all the necessary facilities. The staff was very good at talking English, and excelled at service.
In our case our camera was stolen, and so we told the staff and they took us to the police station despite that the time was 1130pm at we kept saying we
wanted to sleep(glad that they did, since we might not have been able to report it the next day).
In addition they worked as our translator for the police, and told us a lot of information about them for example that you have to pay the police in Vietnam a certain amount of money in order to get them to work - an unofficial but necessary price our staff told us. Seems a little corrupted in my eyes. Anyway, word of advice, if you're going to the police, better bring some money - in our case 100.000d =5$.

Great family hotel. Very comfortable hotel with nice modern rooms. Everyone was very friendly and gave us help whenever we needed it. The location is great, just off the Pham Ngu Lao but quiet enough to get disturbed in the night. Would definitely stay here again.