Hotel Continental Saigon

The Continental opened in 1880, making it the oldest hotel in Vietnam, and its cream French-colonial facade on Dong Khoi still anchors the most elegant corner of Ho Chi Minh City, directly opposite the Opera House. Its terrace was the wartime meeting place of journalists and spies, and Graham Greene, a long-term guest, set key scenes of The Quiet American here. Few hotels anywhere carry so much literary and historical charge per square metre.

Rooms are large and high-ceilinged in the nineteenth-century manner, with dark timber floors, French windows and a frangipani-shaded interior courtyard that muffles the scooter-swarmed streets outside. This is a state-run heritage property rather than an international luxury flag, and it shows in both directions: service is kindly but unpolished, while rates are remarkably gentle for a building of this consequence.

The location could not be improved — Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office, Ben Thanh Market and the city's best cafés and boutiques are all within a ten-minute walk. Dinner in the courtyard beneath century-old trees, followed by a drink where the correspondents once traded rumours, remains one of Southeast Asia's most evocative city-hotel evenings. Choose it for story and setting; choose a modern tower if facilities top your list.