Hotel Continental Saigon Ho Chi Minh City

I'm going to preface this review with the disclaimer that I haven't stayed at other hotels in Saigon, and am giving it four stars vice three for this reason, but since I have spent the past several weeks touring asia and have a good baseline for prices, it was more expensive than it should have been. At about $100 a night, I would wish these "upper" class hotels wouldn't nickel and dime you for all the ammenities. $2.00 to wash my shirt in Saigon? There were caddy shacks down the street that were offering rooms for $20 and free daily laundry. I doubt I would want to stay there, but why does my suitcase of clothes cost me $80 to clean here when I guess I could stay here, rent the guesthouse next door for one day, and save $60 on laundry. Ok, back to the hotel. Booked a trip to the Cuchi Tunnel and the holy city for a private tour and that was $150 through the hotel. If I hadn't waited last minute, I've checked online and that should have been closer to $80. Again, nice hotel with the overcharging for everything. Big rooms, flatscreen tv, free wifi, nice desk and beds are good, sheets are clean and good comforter. Mini fridge with overpriced drinks as usual. If you stay here next door (right next door) is a shopping mall with a supermarket on the 4th floor. Beer there sells for $0.30 but at the hotel is $3.00, and everything else is about the same markup. If you track my reviews you will know that I hate places that don't provide a dinky microwave for heating your room-service left-overs. The hotel also has a courtyard that is the center of all the rooms, and I was surprised at 7:30pm to find my window shaking from the concert band outside playing for a booked wedding. It was so loud that I ended up having to leave the hotel for a few hours (I meant so loud that my tv volume at full blast could not even be heard). Not a big deal since I was thinking about going out anyways, but if someone just got off a long flight and was looking forward to going to bed soon, they would have been absolutely livid by this without prior notice. Service here is first class, but I am willing to bet that is true in most places out here. The good thing here is that the location is first class, and with traffic, if you want to hit the night life if you are staying somewhere too far from the area, you might be waiting awhile getting into town. Close your eyes and cross 12 lanes of moto-bikes with faith in whatever religion you practice though. Otherwise you won't be walking off the block from even this hotel. I"m split on whether I would stay here again. They do offer a really nice breakfast buffet for free everymorning, which probably would save me another $6-10 elsewhere for the same quality, but I seldom eat breakfast so it didn't benefit me greatly, but another reason to add a star for service I don't appreciate.