tad bit of everything: Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel: A Review

27th April '16

Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel
11 Bat Dan, Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi

Hotel lobby..

We arrived at the Little Hanoi Diamond hotel past 2:00 in the morning and it was closed so the driver made a phone call to someone who works at the hotel to open the roll up. It was warm inside and the staff may have been resting during our time of arrival so it was pretty desolate inside. The Bat Dan area is right in the heart of Hanoi’s Old Quarter where you will find tons of food stalls, hotels, spas and what-have-you, a lot of motorcycles and cabs as well.

view from the balcony; lots of places
to chow just across our hotel...

Front Desk

The friendly guy at the reception warmly welcomed us although we didn’t catch his name because it was pretty difficult for us to understand him due to the whole language barrier thing. He kindly asked for our passports and told us we can get them back the next day which possibly means upon departure since we'll be leaving on the eve of the 28th. We were still a bit confused with the time difference when we arrived in Vietnam because we left Manila around 10:30 PM night of the 26th and we arrived in Hanoi morning of the 27th which was already our birthday plus Vietnam is an hour behind us. We both felt a little iffy leaving our passports to the hotel because we haven't done that before and none of the hotels we stayed at abroad ever asked for our passports (for safe keeping or whatever) except upon arrival, they just scan it and they return it back. I guess that's a way for them to ensure their guests will not run off not settling the bill. It was just a little uncomfortable that's all.

Tour
So, while talking to the front desk, we asked if we could customize our tour for later this morning. We told him we’d like to visit certain attractions and showed him the print out of our itinerary and at the same time inquired how much it would cost to rent a vehicle which would take us around the city. He said he can arrange a cab for us for $15 because other means of transportation for tourists would be more pricey. We also asked how much would a 'customized tour' cost but he didn't really confirm anything so nothing was ever clear in the end. We just assumed everything is just really walking distance. Vietnamese people speak fast plus the local twang so it’s quite difficult to understand them so you really have to listen.

My sister and I booked an All day tour for tomorrow, the 28th called Bai Dinh Pagoda - Trang An Eco Tourism Tour for $35 per head. He said we have to approach or remind him again in the morning so he could book it because their system won’t allow him to book it anymore which we agreed since we’re already tired from our flight and all we want is just to lay down and unpack our stuff as its early morning already. We were then ushered in to our hotel room on the 3rd floor. Surprisingly, the hotel do not have elevators so we had to walk all the way up to the 3rd floor no matter how exhausted we were geez.

The hotel have this Spanish or French feel to it. I don’t know if they have air-conditioning outside the rooms because it was warm in the entire building as we walk up towards our room. At long last we finally stepped inside our hotel room! All I wanted the whole time was to have a quick shower and drink cold water. Well, the shower part isn’t a good idea because my body just endured an exhausting flight so I just chugged cold water and had some mango tarts we bought from NAIA back home to combat my hunger.

Deluxe Double/Twin

full size fridge, closet and flat screen TV..

Our room was spacious and cozy with three twin beds (I think). It has this huge wooden closet, a chandelier and a balcony which overlooks Bat Dan Street. The air-condition in our room quickly switched from warm to cold in no time which was good because we’re so yearning for a colder temperature since we arrived in Hanoi. We fired up our computers and accessed the internet as soon as we're settled in.

Globe Prepaid Roaming Service
I enjoyed Globe’s roaming service the whole time I was in Vietnam by the way. It worked as if I’m back home. I learned that, if you’re looking to use Globe's roaming service, it’s still best to personally speak with someone/call Globe to have it activated for you because the SMS roaming activation request isn’t really reliable experience wise because it did not work when I left for Hong Kong last year.

Toilet & Bath..

Room Amenities
Going back, our hotel room is pretty fine except for the broken closet door and we weren’t able to use the other side of the closet since we can’t open it. The room isn’t equipped with tea pot neither which I was quite disappointed with, I can’t survive in a hotel room without a tea pot. I also noticed the limited number of toiletries. There’s only 1 small tube of shower gel and shampoo then 1 small pack of soap for the two of us. The toothbrush was of really poor quality and the toothpaste was awful. Good thing I hoarded some of the free toiletries (2 soaps, 1 shampoo & conditioner, 1 toothpaste) provided for by The Wings Transit Lounge back home when I stayed there and I was able to use them for myself the whole time I was at the The Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel. My sister and I are not finicky travellers but at least we could care for some pretty decent toiletries and of course a tea pot, almost all hotels nowadays provide that. The heater wasn't user friendly or possibly broken because there were instances when the water will just turn too steamy to the point it has almost scald me.

Majority of the hotel staff were very friendly as well (they even surprised us with a birthday cake and a happy birthday song on the day of our birthday). The only exception was this one guy named Dave who wasn’t very helpful. One time my sister and I asked for help to have our boarding passes printed since we just checked in online the night of the 27th. Their desktop computer is in Vietnamese so we had a hard time figuring out how to print our boarding pass from the same computer. We asked for Dave’s help and he said he doesn’t know how neither. Dave said we have to email it to him and he’ll print it from the front desk’s printer. The page is secured so I am unable to copy and paste it to a word document nor save a copy so I could send it as an email attachment. My sister and I were already both tired and pissed off because there seemed to be no solution hadn’t I asked Dave if I could use the front desk’s computer and directly print our boarding passes from their printer. I asked him how do I print it since the language is also in Vietnamese. Again, Dave said ‘I don’t know.’ I mean wtf?? So, what do you know? He was all friendly and helpful to the caucasian guests but he wasn’t the whole time he was dealing with us which made us think if he’s being a racists or what. So, I tried to right-click the page that I’m viewing and asked him if there’s anything that says ‘PRINT’ since I cannot understand a thing, it worked and Mr. oh so helpful guy finally printed our friggin’ boarding passes. It was such an ordeal really. I hope they have IT people they could call in the event their staff isn’t very versed with computers to save everyone time or better yet change the computer language to ‘english’ and install a printer right next to their computers for their guests’ convenience. That wouldn’t hurt, would that?

Breakfast Bar & Dining Area

The breakfast bar offered very limited items to choose from and the dining hall is a little cramped up making it difficult for everyone to hover. The food items during our stay were limited to mostly fruits cold cuts, bread and some baked items. No cold drinks neither, only hot coffee and tea.

across is the Quoc Hoa Hanoi Hotel also in Bat Dan

My overall stay at the Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel was a 5/10. I think the hotel may need a ‘facelift’ to improve their guest rooms and facilities. They may need to find another supplier for their toiletries as well because theirs were seriously awful. I am saying this because the toiletries they provided was one of worst in my experience with my years of travel and stay at various hotels in my own country and abroad. I am also hoping they’ll have a bigger dining hall someday and better breakfast items to choose from. I hope they also improve the air-conditioning down at the lobby because it's really warm the moment you step inside the hotel.

Good morning Hanoi!

In fairness to Little Hanoi Diamond though, they have daily housekeeping and your stuff is safe inside your room. My sister and I left our Macbook in our hotel room the whole day and it was safe and sound the moment we came back. Safety is definitely out of the question although I'm still hoping they add some in-room safe on each and every room to give their guests peace of mind. I kept my Macbook by the way inside my backpack the whole time and padlocked it just to be on the safe side.

As an end note, I will still recommend Little Hanoi Diamond for short stays and to non-finicky travellers because they don’t offer much but a place to sleep for your tired body and mind after a long day. I’m also hoping they equip their hotel rooms with coffee/tea pot at least as it’s a very basic hotel room amenity.

So here's my evaluation for Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel.

Good Points: