How’s the apartment scene in Ho Chi Minh City? Pretty solid. I’ve previously reviewed a decent $350 apartment in Saigon as well as a nicer $400 one. Today I’m showing you another example of what $350/month can land you in Vietnam’s most exciting city.
Cheap apartments are one of the best things about being a digital nomad in Vietnam. If you’re at an early stage of your career, or you’re spending most of your time developing skills that aren’t immediately profitable, taking advantage of the affordable housing situation in Vietnam is a nice way to give yourself some breathing room in your budget.
Let’s get into some of the details of my old apartment now.
Price
The apartment in the video above cost $350/month. I negotiated a bit, however, so that I’d get the first $20 of electricity use each month included with my rent. Anything extra after $20/month I would pay.
At this particular apartment, I just used the fan so my total expenses were $350/month. Admittedly, there were a few nights just using a single fan made it very hot.
At most places, you’re probably looking at $25-$50/month for electricity to run the air conditioning and always feel comfortable. If you’d like to be really frugal with your monthly expenses, however, you could either suffer the heat a little bit, or purchase multiple fans.
Location:
The apartment in the video above was located in District 1. That’s the central district of the city, and probably the most popular district for foreigners to live in.
To be more specific if you’d like to search it, this apartment was located in the 18BIS Nguyen Thi Minh Khai alley — a popular alley for expats and upperclass Vietnamese.
This alley is one of the nicer places to live in District 1 because it’s relatively quiet, and has enough foreigners that you’re not getting stared at all the time. This area also has a wealth of expats which has resulted in tons of awesome dining options nearby!
Utilities & Amenities
Like I said before, my apartment offered my first $20 of electricity use each month for free. My apartment also had warm water, a fridge, freezer, and air conditioning all available to me.
My favorite part about Vietnamese apartments to this day is that many of them include free laundry and cleaning with your rent. At any time I could place dirty clothes in a basket outside my room.
The basket was collected by the cleaning lady every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and she’d wash and dry your clothes for you — returning everything about 48 hours later.
She would also come clean your floor, wipe the counters, wash the bathroom, change your bedsheets, and even make your bed for you!
Having someone do all these domestic chores for you makes you feel like a bad ass. More importantly, outsourcing these menial things gives you more time to focus on your mission in life — whatever that may be.
My cleaning lady was great so I’d often surprise her with chocolate bars or bags of chestnuts. It was a bit sad to leave and say goodbye after I’d stayed there so long.
While this apartment didn’t have a kitchen in the room, it did have a shared kitchen downstairs if you ever wanted to cook something. The apartment also had free parking, and solid wifi.
Apartment Rules
My apartment didn’t have any weird rules. This is something to watch out for in Vietnam though. Most places obviously won’t let you do drugs or bring hookers back. I’ve never tried either of those things, but that seems fair enough to me because of the security concerns.
A lot of places in Vietnam won’t even let you bring normal girls back to your apartment though. Having your girlfriend or date shamed is all too common from security and jealous Vietnamese guys who sit shirtless outside for seemingly all hours of the day (and well into the night!).
Having lived here for 3 years, I think the culture is slowly getting Westernized, for better and for worse. It’s hard to see things change while you’re immersed in life here everyday, but I think there’s definitely a trend of city landlords becoming more lenient with overnight guests.
It’s still probably the exception rather than the rule, however. If you intend for your Vietnamese girlfriend (or girls you’re dating) to live or visit you at night, you MUST get this agreement (preferably in writing) before signing any lease or rental contract.
The other thing you’re going to want to look out for is whether you’re free to come and go as you please. For the first 6-7 months I rented this apartment I had a key to the main gate and was able to come or go at any time I wanted.
Unfortunately, the landlord changed while I was living here. The last 2-3 months I was here I no longer had a key to open the gate and had to knock and wait for security to open the door at night.
That’s not fun. Especially when you’re coming and going multiple times in one night, or trying to date. Such is life in Vietnam though, you gotta take the good with the bad (or just find a better apartment)!
Conclusion
$350/month can get you a pretty decent place in District 1 of Saigon. You can check out the video I embedded at the top of this post to see if the place looks satisfactory to you.
If you’d like more upscale living, you’re obviously going to need to increase your budget or sacrifice on your location a bit. If you’d like to rent a place for $250 or less each month, you’re often going to have to sacrifice on size, cleanliness, location, or freedom (see key example above).
Overall, the apartment scene in Saigon isn’t as good as the one in Chiang Mai, but it’s still pretty damn good.
P.S. Thinking about coming to live in Vietnam? Be sure to check out this post.