Central Home

I was excited after reading so many great reviews, but I didn’t enjoy my stay at Central Home. The house was clean and cheap, and when I decided to leave early after booking and paying for two nights, they refunded the second night. That was kind of them. I’d booked directly and messaged about arriving by bus, saying I could get there anytime. I took a mid-morning bus, told the owner I was on my way, and arrived at 11. He sent the gate code over Zalo, so I let myself in. A few minutes later, he said I was two hours early for check-in and charged 60,000 VND to enter then. It had started raining, as it always does in Gia Lai, and I had bags, so I paid instead of walking to a café. If he’d given me a specific check-in time in the Zalo messages, I could easily have planned around it. At the next hotel, I checked in at 11:15 for a 14:00 check-in without a fee. I’d specifically searched for a private bathroom and a window, but the window shown in the pictures was boarded up. There were lots of mosquitoes and ants in the room. I’d brought fruit from the market and wondered if I’d brought the ants in, but they were throughout the room and on the bed, so I don’t think that was it. There was also a dead roach in the closet. It’s Asia, so roaches happen and that alone isn’t the end of the world, but the room smelled strongly of chemicals. I kept the AC on Dry the whole time, and I think they have trouble drying out the room and mask the smell with fragrance. The thing that finally made me leave was the gate lock. When I came back in the late afternoon, it wouldn’t open. Reaching through the gate to work a lock you don’t know is already a pain. I called, and three different people came; only the third, who had tools, managed to force it open or break it, I’m not sure which. It started pouring during all this. The neighbor let me shelter on her porch from the rain and flash flood rushing down the street, but after that I decided not to go out for drinks in case I got locked out at night while drunk. The video I attached was from before the rain got heavy. Once the gate was open, I had to take off my shoes and cross the street through ankle-deep rushing water. It was deeper on the neighbor’s side because of the alley’s slope. The owner charged me an extra 60k, then refunded the night I’d reserved. You can decide if you want to stay here.