Mango Home Riverside

Wanting to escape the noise of HCMC we took a 2.5 hrs taxi ride on a rather boring drive to the Mango Home Riverside. on arrival we opted for a late lunch to the noise of a coconut factory across the river. The only available soup was utterly tasteless and the fish dish totally over salted. We subsequently had ‘’dinners’’ in the lounge consisting of Springrolls and Banana Fritters, hardly what we wanted but better safe than sorry . The so called Sunset Cruise was an expensive rip-off and included a plate of chips with the Coconut Juice to be paid for extra. The river is sadly over polluted and the riverbanks lined with noisy, smoke belching factories. No romance to the ‘cruise’ but a 4% surcharge on our payment by CC - better carry tons of cash….. Let’s not talk about ‘breakfast’ but the staff with only some friendly and welcoming. Given the small number of guests more effort could have been made apart from the obvious lack of training One final note of caution. The water from the shower is not only hot but BOILING hot, a waste of energy and so was our trip to the NO Mangos ‘home’ which lacked any homely feeling and management

There are many options for staying in Ben Tre. We choose Mango because of the lovely surroundings. We are only spent one night. Pros: beautiful natural surroundings in the river with a nice view of sunset, sitting by their sunset lounge . Played Pool after dinner and was told we could play as long as we like, same as the pool, swim as long as we like. Small and adequate pool. Room was nice with good outdoor shower. Bicycle was nice for a ride once you got off the busy main road. Cons: We were greeted by a welcome drink but then hounded us to pay our bill right away for the night. They didn’t tell us times for breakfast or dinner. Dinner was just fair, I ordered the fried rice with squid and shrimp which were hard to find and seasoned blandly. Meat dishes just ok. Breakfast was buffet but they ran out of banana bread . Eggs or noodle soup was offered but small amount of fruit. Just ok, not a bigger spread like in most hotels in Vietnam. Right after I checked out I wanted a little water to bring along for the trip back, one staffer directed me to the restaurant to buy a small bottle of water. I was surprised and asked another staffer and she offered to fill my water bottle up,which was just fine. So I don’t know if I would stay there again but I did like the environment and pool and playing pool and the bicycles.

We had a wonderful stay here. It was our first few nights in Vietnam, so it was great to arrive to such a warm welcome - plus a nice chilled fruit drink and some cooling towels. The room was as expected, good air con, comfortable bed. We overlooked the pond area, it was very quiet, don't think we saw or heard any other people whilst we were in the room. The bathroom was partly covered and partly open to the elements, so you did have to remember to fully shut the bathroom door each time you went in, so as not to let in mosquitoes. But that was not a problem, I liked the quirky bathroom with its resident lizard! Food here was fantastic. First night we were jetlagged and just wanted to eat quickly and go to bed. We were given a riverside table, service was great, food came quickly and was delicious. In fact every meal was really good. One breakfast was buffet, including a fresh egg station, the other 2 days breakfast was a la carte. We enjoyed both. Staff very regularly checked up on us, came to see if we were still enjoying our stay, and also reconfirmed our trip bookings. We did the sunset boat trip - which we ended up having to ourselves as no one else had booked. And also did the half day trip around local areas and industries, which was really enjoyable. We were very well looked after. We took advantage of the provided bikes. They gave us a clear map of a good route to take, which mostly avoided main roads and went around the countryside areas. We really enjoyed our morning out, and stopped for lunch at the Family Restaurant just outside the hotel on the way home. All in all we had a fantastic stay, can't speak highly enough. Thank you so much to all the staff for looking after us so well and being so friendly.