What to expect from a Vietnamese homestay

We loved staying in Vietnamese homestays. They are often the cheapest form of accommodation (5-10 EUR a night) and you can book them through service providers like Booking.com. We started to see a pattern, so here’s our top 10 things to expect when homestaying in Vietnam:

1. There’ll be a grandma figure that seems to run the Vietnamese homestay show. They’re not necessarily doddery – in fact they whiz around the kitchen with lightening speed.
2. Then there’s her husband. The smiley, slightly useless looking one of the family. He’ll maybe do a bit of DIY or take the grandkids to school on his moped, but generally he’s not essential to the running of the homestay.
3. Grandma and grandpa will likely have a few kids. It’s often the daughters that are in charge of reception. They speak the best English, but there’s often one (there always is) who has for some reason been consigned to kitchen/cleaning duties.
4. Then there’s the all-important cute baby. This is pretty much a requirement of any Vietnamese homestay as far as we’ve seen. They’ll have spiky hair and look all confused when strange-looking foreigners keep wandering into their house. But they make for an excellent ice breaker – you can wave at the baby, ask how old it is and say it’s cute.
5. Finally there’s the husbands of the grown-up children. We never really saw them so we assume they were always out at work earning some money. Either that or they were drinking bia with their mates – at least they’re out of the way of the women.
6. You’ll need to take your shoes off before you enter a Vitenamese homestay. They have tidy little racks outside or just in the door so you have someone to leave them.
7. Something similar happens in the bathrooms. Because a lot of them are wet rooms, the Vietnamese don’t want you getting your socks wet when you pop in for a pee. So they give you plastic sandals/flipflops to use in the bathroom.
8. The whole family seem to be sleeping in one or two downstairs rooms and they do everything else (playing with the baby, eating dinner, just chilling) in the front room. Lack of doors means that everything is very open at a Vietnamese homestay– as you walk down a street you see families going about their daily business.
9. A good Vietnamese homestay will give you free bottled water, and have a very reasonably priced mini bar (saigon beer for 20,000d – 1 EUR)
10. Breakfast! We were honestly expecting a cellophane-wrapped croissant and that was it. But every morning, the grandma of the house would give you a choice of pancakes (often banana or pineapple), eggs anyway you like them, and a whole range of drinks. On top of that they’d bring you a fruit platter too. It was often enough to feed us until a late lunch.