Locked in a room in Ho Chi Minh City – The Escape Hunt Experience

Locked in a small room with just your wits and intelligence to rely on to get yourself out…it sounds like a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, but it is, in fact, one of Ho Chi Minh City’s newest and hottest attractions: The Escape Hunt Experience.

We first came across references to The Escape Room Experience HCMC on-line and we were intrigued. So, let’s get this straight…we pay them to lock us in a small room, and we have an hour to work out how to get out? And this is fun?

Oh, yes, it certainly IS fun.

The Escape Hunt Experience is a based on classic “escape the room” online games, which are apparently popular around the world. Not being gamers, we were oblivious to this trend. But apparently these on-line games simulate being locked into a room, and then you solve cryptic puzzles and challenges to get ‘yourself’ out. So, the obvious extention of that was to create real-life escape rooms, where players are locked into an actual room, and have to use the contents of the room to seek clues, solve puzzles, break codes and ultimately, escape.

At The Escape Hunt Experience HCMC, there are six such rooms,  split into three different adventures (Murder in the Palace, Kidnap at the Opera and Blackmail in the Bar). We choose to book for the Murder in the Palace Room. Each of the rooms is designed for 2 –5 players. If you happen to have a larger group, you can book two rooms and compete against each other. The storyline for each of the rooms is set 100 years ago in Saigon, and includes fictitious characters of that era.

So, we turned up at our booked time, for our 15 minute pre-room briefing which is held in a lounge area themed like an old English tea room. We sat on the comfy sofas with the hot tea we were given, and suspiciously eyed-off the surrounding detective paraphernalia: such as magnifying glasses, a typewriter and an old-fashioned pipe. It turned out, we were to be Sherlock Holmes.

After a couple of team photos, we were locked into the room where the crime had been committed. All we had to do was use the contents of room to solve the mystery of who was the murderer, and that would lead to us unlocking the door. Just inside the room was a locked box that required a key to open it. We had to find that key, open the box and press the button inside to open the door and escape. Simple!

Ahhhh…not so simple. Our detective skills and puzzle-solving abilities were woeful.

We were told that everything within the room except the ceiling was part of the game, and that we could ask for hints through an intercom but that each time we did so, would cost our team one minute of playing time. Our Escape Master then exited through a secret small door which had no means of opening from our side of the wall.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about what happened in the room, as the fun of it is going into the experience blind. What I will say, is that the room was full of seemingly random items, and that many of the furnishings or items, were also locked with a variety of combination and/or key locks.  Pretty soon, we worked out that we needed to work our way through a number of locks before we’d get out. There was a whiteboard on one wall where we could write notes as we needed to.

We started with a lot of pride. We could do this! We would combine our numerical, literary and cryptic prowess and we’d knock this challenge out of the park.

After 20 minutes of mostly arguing among ourselves, we asked for our first clue.

It was the first of four times we buzzed that intercom and asked for clues.

And then, with time running out it was a frantic race against the clock to solve the final bits of the puzzle so we could retain our pride and exit the room within the allotted hour…

We didn’t make it. Thank goodness for our Escape Master. If it wasn’t for her, we’d still be in that room.

You don’t have to be in Ho Chi Minh City to try out The Escape Hunt Experience – there are a number of them around the world, and more are planned to open this year. (Including one which recently opened right here in Melbourne.)

The Details

Would you be game to be locked in a room?

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