A25 is located within walking distance to some of HCM City's premier tourist sites including Ben Thanh Market, Independence Palace, Military Remnants Museum and the beautiful parks. Unfortunately, that is the best thing about it. We booked primarily for the pool, which turned out to be a cesspool of algae and as such unusable.The sheets on arrival were dirty, these were changed on request but left one feeling quite disgusted but perhaps the worst thing was the awful stale cigarette odour that left everything in the room stinking like an ashtray. TRAVELLERS BEWARE THIS IS A SMOKING HOTEL AND EVERYTHING REEKS OF OLD TOBACCO. Our room had no natural light, with the only window being on the stairwell where we heard the night manager walking up and down through the night with his walkie-talkie on and speaking loudly.As well as being noisy we had no air flow to lessen the smell. When I requested being moved to another room I was told the whole hotel allowed smoking. Adding to the awful sleeping environment they had irritating elevator music being piped through the hotel from 6.30am.
The breakfast was adequate the first day but the second day changed from a buffet to a restricted menu with only one item and one drink each. No offer of fruit and not able to order anything else was disappointing when as a family of 6 we relied on a decent breakfast to keep us going. The waitress was apologetic,& staff, in general, were nice and some tried to be helpful but English was limited