Nzh Hostel

NZH Hostel is good value for money. There aren't that many budget-style guest houses in Yangon that offer many single and double rooms with air conditioning. So I was happy to find NZH and enjoyed my stay there. The lobby area is nicely appointed with a boutique-hotel style decor. It also has a great coffee machine that provides delicious brewed coffee - latte and cappuccino etc. There was a cooler in the lobby offering cold drinks at a reasonable price. The room I had was a good size and had a comfortable bed with really nice sheets and pillows and a comforter. The air conditioner worked really well. Wi-Fi signal was strong and reliable, and I had a solid connection to the Internet. The room had some nice convenient touches such as a table/dresser, a mirror, a night light control and electrical outlet right beside the bed. The two young men staffing the front desk were friendly and helpful, though their English ability was low to non-existent. Breakfast was made individually for each guest when you went down to the lobby and it was good. The coffee from the fancy coffee machine was the highlight. The two shower stalls in the shared bathroom were large, had plenty of hot water, and the hostel provided soap and shampoo and towels. You could tell that the owner paid attention to the details and took pride in making it as nice as possible with lots of convenient touches while keeping the price reasonable for backpackers. The neighborhood was very local, and you got a real sense that you were experiencing a slice of authentic Yangon life. The hostel was also located just a couple of streets away from the famous 19th Street with its nighttime market of beer and barbecue. Sule Pagoda is not that far away. Also just a short walk to the Pansodan Ferry Terminal if you want to hop across the river and have a small adventure.

There was a distinct difference in tone between the lobby area and the upper floors with the rooms. The lobby was styled like a boutique hotel with dark lighting, fancy, small irregular wooden slab tables with tall stools and large artistic photographs of old Yangon on the wall. But the rooms upstairs were much more on the hostel-side of things with very narrow stairs heading up, thin walls that don't provide much sound insulation between rooms, and rather basic furnishing. I was perfectly happy with my room, but it was definitely a bit odd to be in a hostel upstairs and then go down into a more upscale boutique-style lobby with jazz tinkling over the speakers. The boutique-style decor was nice, but it didn't lend itself to a very social atmosphere. The small wooden-slab tables were quite fancy, but I kind of prefer big square tables where you can spread out your laptop and maps and phone and hang out. But the lobby at NZH didn't have that kind of vibe. The toilet stalls in the shared bathroom were on the small side, and the walls separating the toilet stalls did not go up to the ceiling, so there wasn't much feeling of privacy. They did not appear to have their own generator, so when there was a power outage (very common in Yangon while I was there), the hostel lost all power, too. All you could do was sit in your room in the dark and wait for the city power to come back on. That time could stretch into an hour or two, and your room without air conditioning became very hot. 22nd Street, where NZH is located, is a very narrow and very busy alleyway. Walking up and down that alleyway back and forth to the hostel was never easy as you had to constantly dodge the trucks and cars coming up the one narrow lane.

Clean, comfortable bed, aircon, Wi-Fi and hot showers were all working fine. Staff doesn't speak English but they're nice. Breakfast included is nothing amazing but still good - just if they could make it on the spot and not in advance, that would avoid serving cold toasts and cold eggs.. Minor things, overall bring earplugs, expect a tiny but comfortable room and it's fine.

Paper thin walls - you can hear everything going on around your room. No windows. They basically put up fakes walls to fit as many rooms as possible in a space not really meant for this..