The Palm Lodge

We had the best time at Palm Lodge! Mr Strong is the nicest man in the planet. We had nowhere to stay, he took us in, cooked us a fresh meal and made us feel so welcome. I have never had this experience with a host whilst travelling and I will be sure to return here. The food was also excellent and very reasonably priced.

We had booked to stay at Palm Lodge almost 3 weeks in advance. However, it wasn’t until 3pm on the day we were supposed to check in that we received an email stating they had no room for us due to a ‘system error’ and had cancelled our booking! We were already on the bus to phong nha and were last than 2 hours away! I immediately contacted the host who apologised but offered no help or support. Unfortunately, it was also a national holiday in Vietnam so we could not find any other hotels or hostels anywhere near the same price bracket. I contacted the host again stating our issue and that we needed some help as we now had nowhere to stay and didn’t want to pay 4x the price somewhere else. However, he got aggressive down the phone and did not provide any support whatsoever. In this conversation, he also stated he couldn’t believe we booked his room for the price we did. This leads us to believe he intentionally cancelled to sell his room elsewhere at a higher price. This was confirmed when rechecking Hostelworld and our room had reappeared for double the price! Unfortunately, this seems to be a regular occurrence here in Vietnam and has happened to us before! If it really was a problem with the booking system and an overbooking I’m sure they would of know a long time before 3pm on the check in day! Thankfully, we contacted Hostelworld who agreed this was totally unacceptable from the host and will be investigated. Luckily, they were able to provide support in booking another place for us which ended up being much nicer! AVOID Palm Lodge unless you want to end up in the same situation!