Centre Saigon D1 -Hidden Charms

Amenities:
- Living room, kitchen and outdoor sitting area downstairs too
- Extremely trustworthy housekeeper comes daily
The best parts of Saigon: Life on the street, the food, the people, and the winding mazes of alleys where you discover it all. My house is right in District 1, a 5-minute walk from the American Consulate and Intercontinental Hotel, but the experience you'll have staying here is totally different from what you'd get at a big hotel downtown or a guest house in the backpacker district. Here, you won't be accosted by anyone trying to sell you greeting cards or manicures, you won't be staying beside the Gucci store or Marc Jacobs (though they are only a 10-minute walk away), you'll be in the middle of people just living normal life and you'll see it up close because their doors are always open!
Walking off the main street called Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, enter hem (alley) 18A and find cafes, very good and cheap restaurants, shops selling produce and other basics, a Buddhist temple, guys playing checkers, people napping, and much, much more. Sit down on the street and have a mango smoothie for 75 cents, or hang out and drink some $1 beers until late. There's plenty of people watching to do and plenty of people to meet. Then, nearing the end of the hem, make two lefts into much smaller alleys and you'll find my house. The main road is busy and buzzing, hem 18A is mellower but still full of action, and our alley is a sleepy respite just a few steps away. Please be aware though that Saigon is a noisy place, so unless you are in a high-rise hotel, you probably will still hear sounds from the outside. The recycling lady, the coconut seller, banana seller, knife sharpener, etc. all have songs that they sing as they walk up and down the alleys to sell their services. Kids play outside in the evenings until about 9pm, and during the day, there are occasionally sounds of work on buildings nearby, but believe me, this is still one of the quietest places you'll find around the area.

This enclave has a lot of expats living in it, so it's comfortable, but we aren't completely catered to in the way we would be in some other areas of the city. Hey, I didn't come to Vietnam to feel like I'm in Las Vegas, did you? However, there is a convenience store on the corner where you can get Marmite, American breakfast cereal and many other items a westerner may need. There are also a ton of cafes serving European coffee. And there are always taxis sitting right outside on the main street, so that's never a problem.
My 4-story house has 3 bedrooms each on their own floor with their own bathroom, a living room, kitchen and half bath on the ground floor, and a gated entryway with a little table and chairs for morning coffee amongst the plants or just zoning out. Your room is on the third floor (or as we say in the US, the fourth floor). The queen size mattress is brand new, there is good wi-fi (router in your room), a desk, two chairs, a good-sized closet for two people and air conditioning. There is no TV because we don't use it. The English language channels here are really lame so we just watch TV and movies on our laptops (I recommend using something called Strong VPN in Vietnam if you want to access things like Hulu etc., if that's important to you). Feel free to use the living room and kitchen. You can use the washing machine but there isn't much space for hanging things and I personally do not like how clothes turn out when hung to dry. We have most of our laundry and dry cleaning done by a western-style service that for a nominal extra fee can pick up at 9am and get it back to you around 5 or 6 the same day. We have a housekeeper come in every day too. Towels, soap and a bottle of water are provided.
One of the previous guest’s favorite things about Saigon is that there are so many hidden places, almost everything seems to be a secret one! This can also be a little frustrating sometimes when you need something in particular and the internet is of no help, so just ask me and I'll try to direct you to what you're looking for. But nothing beats a long day of wandering around, and often when you think you probably aren't allowed to go down some alley, you probably are and you probably should. You just might find the coolest cafe in the city!