Oyo 708 All Red Hostel Chiang Mai

A warning for anyone booking here. I had a reservation on booking.com for a month, but they didn't reply to my messages about checking in early. After seeing reviews about rooms suddenly being unavailable and bookings getting mixed up, I went over a day early and found they had no room for me. They acted as though they'd cancelled the reservation, even though booking.com still showed it as confirmed. A friendly Thai woman spoke English, but she couldn't do anything about her boss messing up, sorry, managing the bookings. I was furious. To its credit, booking.com offered a comparable stay, but it was 25 km away.

The location is great, close to the old city, and the place was clean and tidy. My stay was exceptionally comfortable and better than I expected. The owner and staff were warm and attentive, with the sort of hospitality that feels like home. Some rooms have been renovated, and staff can help with documents and other things. The staff speak Chinese. I'd recommend it to everyone.

There wasn't an on-site manager, so when an issue came up there was no solution until 7am or later. We had booked and paid for an extra night so we could sleep when we arrived at 4am Monday. We called and texted three times before getting there, but at 5:50am they said there was no room to check into, which made it seem like they'd sold the room we'd paid for. Then we were told check-in could only happen after 7am. The place was very dirty, and Chinese was the only language spoken. The manager was direct on the phone and tried their best to communicate with us using Google Translate. Update: management arrived at 6:37am and said they'd double booked our room, which wouldn't be free until 7:45am. They were very friendly and doing their best. Hopefully the people in our room really needed it.

This was by far the strangest booking experience I've had while traveling through South East Asia. I booked online through expidea and arrived at noon to check in. Two other groups were waiting too, while we all waited for the “main guy” to finish cooking. I still don't know why someone else couldn't check us in or take over the cooking. After half an hour, they told me my prepaid expidea booking wasn't valid because they had no agreement, and they were fully booked. The second group was turned away too, though they only spoke Thai, so I don't know why. Something didn't add up. The outdoor common area was dirty, full of trash, and had random stuff everywhere, with no sign of basic upkeep. After that first impression, I couldn't imagine what the rooms were like. I'm writing this in the hope it saves someone else the headache. I had to find another hotel during the lantern festival and contact expidea to get my money back.