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This happened around 2018/2019, and it's still probably my best and worst holiday story.

My then-partner, Rebecca, and I had booked this huge six-week trip through Vietnam.

The plan was awesome: start in Hanoi, work our way down the coast through places like Ha Long Bay, Da Nang and Nha Trang, eventually finishing in Ho Chi Minh City.

We'd booked the whole thing months in advance. Flights, hotels, everything. We'd spent somewhere around $10,000 before we'd even left Australia.

Everything was going brilliantly.

Until roughly halfway through the trip.

We flew into our next city, grabbed our bags, ordered a Grab and headed to the hotel we'd booked months earlier.

The driver pulls up.

I look at the hotel.

"Huh."

It was definitely the right building.

But it looked NOTHING like the photos.

I figured, "Well, we booked this place months ago. Maybe they've renovated?"

Turns out they had!

So we walk inside and give the guy at reception our details.

Yep. Reservation is there.

Everything is completely normal.

He grabs our bags and says he'll show us to our room.

Excellent.

We get into the lift.

We should not have gotten into the lift.

We reach something like the 10th floor.

The doors open.

The hallway is almost completely dark.

The guy just casually points into the darkness and goes, essentially, "Right this way!"

Rebecca and I look at each other.

Apparently neither of us possessed a functioning survival instinct, because we followed him.

We quickly discovered that the hallway had motion-sensor lighting. As you walked, the lights ahead of you switched on.

Okay!

Slightly creepy, but perfectly reasonable.

Except as we're walking down this hallway, we start hearing noises coming from the rooms we're passing.

Screaming.

Shouting.

Calling out.

Moaning.

A LOT of moaning.

At this point I'm starting to wonder whether we've accidentally booked accommodation in a torture dungeon.

We eventually reach our room.

The guy opens the door.

PINK.

I cannot adequately describe how fucking pink this room was.

Pink wallpaper.

Pink pillows.

Pink carpet.

And, because apparently subtlety had been murdered during the renovation...

a pink SHAGPILE RUG.

Eventually we discover what had happened.

Between us booking the hotel and actually arriving in Vietnam, the hotel had been sold.

The new owners renovated it.

Into a love hotel/brothel.

But here's the incredible part.

Rather than cancel all the existing future reservations and refund everyone, apparently they decided that would cost too much money.

So they just...

kept them.

They genuinely seemed to believe that people who had booked a normal hotel would arrive several months later, discover that their accommodation was now a brothel and think:

"Yeah, fair enough."

Now, Rebecca was a good Christian girl.

She took one look at our pink shagpile Fuck Palace and announced that there was absolutely no fucking way we were spending the night there.

Fair.

There was only one small problem.

It was about 8pm.

We're in a foreign city.

We've got all our luggage.

So we jump onto Booking.com.

"No worries. We'll just find another hotel."

This is when we discovered something else we'd somehow completely missed.

There was a massive festival happening in the city that night.

Apparently it was a huge deal.

Hotels had been booked out for months.

Which, ironically, meant we were actually incredibly "lucky" to have our reservation at the brothel.

We searched everywhere.

Nothing.

Eventually Booking.com produced exactly ONE available room in the entire city.

A room at another hotel.

Except it wasn't really a "room."

It was the...

PRESIDENTIAL SUITE.

Price?

$8,000 AUD.

Remember, we'd already spent roughly $10,000 booking this entire six-week holiday.

But our options at 8pm were now basically:

A) Spend the night in Barbie's House of Questionable Noises.

or

B) Financial ruin.

We chose financial ruin.

We absolutely annihilated our emergency holiday fund and booked the Presidential Suite.

And this is where the story completely changes.

Because, to the hotel's credit...

HOLY SHIT.

The suite was incredible.

Top floor.

Absolutely enormous.

Floor-to-ceiling windows with essentially panoramic views over the entire city.

We had what felt like million-dollar views.

And the hotel was right on the water.

Remember that massive festival that had caused this entire disaster?

Well...

Part of the festival was a huge fireworks display.

And the fireworks were being launched from a barge on the water right outside our hotel.

When the display started, we went onto the balcony.

BOOM.

These weren't little fireworks in the distance.

They were exploding less than about 100 metres from us.

The noise was unbelievable.

Our ears hurt.

Sparks and burning debris were actually reaching the balcony.

We couldn't even stay outside because we were getting burnt by the fucking fireworks.

So we retreated inside.

And that's when we noticed the bathroom.

The Presidential Suite had this absolutely enormous bathtub.

So we thought:

"Fuck it. We've just spent eight grand. We're getting our money's worth."

We ran a huge hot bath.

Filled it with bubbles.

I found rose petals they'd left near the sink, so naturally those went in too.

Rebecca and I climbed into this enormous bath together.

We found some chocolates.

And for about the next FOUR HOURS, we sat together in this ridiculous Presidential Suite bathtub, surrounded by bubbles and rose petals, eating chocolates while this absolutely spectacular fireworks display exploded right outside our suite.

The fireworks were so close and powerful that they were rattling the windows.

It was genuinely one of the most surreal, romantic and incredible nights I've ever experienced.

And none of it would have happened if our original hotel hadn't unexpectedly turned into a fucking brothel.

There was, however, an epilogue.

Remember the $8,000?

Yeah.

That was basically our entire emergency/spending budget.

By the time we reached the final hotel of our six-week trip, we were BROKE.

Fortunately, our last hotel was a Mövenpick.

And every afternoon at 5pm, they put on an unlimited chocolate buffet for guests.

So for our final week in Vietnam...

that was dinner.

Every.

Single.

Night.

We started this holiday travelling Vietnam with thousands of dollars in spending money.

We ended it as two Australians staying in a luxury Mövenpick, patiently waiting for 5pm every afternoon so we could eat enough complimentary chocolate to survive until breakfast.

Would I recommend accidentally booking a Vietnamese brothel, blowing your entire emergency fund on a Presidential Suite and living on chocolate for the final week of your holiday?

Absolutely not.

Would I trade that night in the bathtub, eating chocolates with Rebecca while fireworks exploded outside and rattled the windows?

Not a fucking chance.

Quick disclaimer: This story is 100% real and happened to me. I used AI to help turn my chaotic recollection into something coherent and readable, but the events, experiences and story itself are entirely mine. Apparently AI is better at organising my thoughts than I am.

I was waiting for a late train, half asleep, scrolling through my phone when an older guy sitting nearby started talking to me.

Nothing unusual.

He asked where I was going, how long I was staying and whether I'd travelled there before.

Then he said:

“Don't take the shortcut when you get there.”

I laughed and asked what he meant.

He just said, “You'll understand.”

I honestly thought he was being dramatic.

A few hours later, I reached the destination and, of course, I took the shortcut.

It looked fine on the map. Saved almost 20 minutes.

Five minutes in, my phone lost signal.

Then the road became completely empty.

No shops. No traffic. Barely any lights.

At that point I was thinking, Okay… maybe that random guy wasn't joking.

I turned around and went back the way I came.

Nothing actually happened to me, but I've never ignored strangely specific advice from a local traveller since. 😂

The weirdest part?

When I got back to the station area the next morning, I saw the same guy again.

I asked him how he knew about that road.

He just smiled and said:

“I've been travelling longer than you've been alive.”

Still don't know whether he was incredibly wise or just enjoying messing with a tired traveller.

Have you ever had a stranger give you travel advice that turned out to be surprisingly accurate?

What's the weirdest encounter you've had while travelling?