No matter what type of travelling you do, the first order of business when you land in a new place is to find a place to stay.   We knew that when we arrived in Saigon, we would be exhausted and potentially jet lagged, so we pre-booked a guesthouse for the first two nights.   We found a relatively inexpensive one down a side street off the main tourist drag on hostelworld.com for US$8 per person, per night.  It was a small room with two sets of bunkbeds so things were tight for the first two nights but we made do while we looked for something more long term.

There are essentially two options for longer term lodging in Saigon.  The first is to rent an apartment.  I had done some preliminary searches for apartments and they were a bit over what we had budgeted per month to spend on accommodation (max $200/month).  I checked online, on Couchsurfing and even Facebook groups – many people were looking for roommates and offering apartments and suites, but for too much.   Also, we got burned at our apartment in Istanbul where the bitch of a landlord would only give us back half of the substantial deposit we put down because she claimed we had not cleaned enough and there was water damage (you’ll have to trust me that we SHOULD have received every penny back).  So with that fresh in our minds, we went with option two.

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