Suburbs with relative calm, green space, modern affordable apartments?

Hi Welcome,

Define spacious, also your budget per month, you can order online to get groceries or visit them seeing there are western style grocery shops in just about every area.

@AndyHCMC Is a two bedroom with an upper limit of $600 with all utilities (but preferably lower, around $400-500 range) realistic?

Most of the places you mention you can get a 2 bed within that pretty easy.

@AndyHCMC Phew, that's a relief. Thanks for the help. Any recommendations as to which areas have any the best green space/clean air/quiet while not being too distant from the centre of town?

@AndyHCMC Phew, that's a relief. Thanks for the help. Any recommendations as to which areas have any the best green space/clean air/quiet while not being too distant from the centre of town?
-@dustanddirtofheaven

unless 30+ mins out i'd say not many.

What youre looking for is not possible in Saigon. Phu My Hung(D7) is about the closest place that sort of meets your criteria, but as you said there is no job there.

With the exception of Binh Chan and Hoc Mon which are sort of on the urban/rural divide and Cu Chi which is largely rural, your list is almost all places that you would probably consider urban, and fairly densly urban at that.  Di An and Thu Dao are fairly dense enclaves in a larger province, but being develop as fast as property developers can manage.  Some of these places are a bit distant from HCM center timewise even though they may look close on the map.

I know this is hyper-specific to me and a weird ask, but I've narrowed it down to D8 as my top choice, and now I have to decide between D12, Thu Duc, & Go Vap as my other two choices. Does anyone have any opinions on the latter three and which is worth excluding?

Start with why D8

@AndyHCMC Just happen to have my eye on a specific building there I really like that's very close to work, it's nothing about D8 in general. I'm worried about airplane noise in the Go Vap location and someone told me traffic is fairly bad there but it seems to be a 20 minute walk from a couple of parks which is nice (though I don't know if people in HCMC walk for 20 minutes at a time, really!). The Go Vap location is also roughly equal distance from D1 as the D12 location & Thu Duc locations. I like D12 because there seems to be an abundance of very affordable apartments nearby but there are some in Thu Duc too, so I have a hard time distinguishing.

My priority is really peaceful, affordable living. If I'm living serenely in my little high-rise I'm pretty much happy, although green space in walking distance is an enormous plus. Since they're all roughly equidistant to the heart of the city otherwise, I'm not sure what to think.

Fair enough,

Riverside Apartments are ok and have green space around.

From personal experience, Go Vap is busy I lived there for a year and my sister in law lives there, Yes the planes go over the road near Lotte Mart so low you can see people in the windows.

Thu Duc is just down the road from where I live and Ive been there hundreds of times, it is also busy, Linh Dong area has apartments with green space.

IF you have the opportunity to come before you have to pick where to work I would get here and get a hotel in each area and spend a few days looking before leaping.

@AndyHCMC Unfortunately I'll have to decide from half the world away today, I'm already a little late in giving notice. Of course going in-person would be ideal, I hate to try to shake such tricky, idiosyncratic details for my situation out from the good folks of this forum, but 'tis the way of things.

I was looking at Riverside ages back and it's basically exactly what I'm looking for in terms of accommodation but unfortunately it's too far from any of my workplaces, not worth the hourlong commute. Thanks for the info on Go Vap and Thu Duc. Any opinion on D12?

Sorry not really been there only through it.

Go Vap does have Lotte mart, E-mart heaps of shops & market, i'd pick vincom/emart areas over phong 14 & 12 end I lived in Phong 14 not a lot there and road near pandora shopping center (bottom of runway) is a nightmare in rush hr.

We stayed in a place called Greenhill Apartments in district 12 for a couple of months a few years back.

it’s in the Software  City estate/compound.

Really nice apartments. Quiet area with tree lined streets and green spaces.

We live on a noisy road in Than Hiep, outer Hoc Mon. But, close to us it gets more rural and quiet and with houses for rent too.

Yo Dusty. Congratulations on the job prospects. English teacher?

I've lived in D8 for years. Which building, please?

In the nicest terms, I describe D8 as an inner city neighborhood between 15 and 30 minutes to D1 depending. There are some rural parts on the fringes that are industrial or swamp and unlivable. The black water in the canal near our house is very stinky. It is a poor neighborhood, possibly the leading district for crime (theft not violence) in Saigon. Certainly the most morons and psychopaths on motorbikes. (Seriously. Think about it. Intelligence is a bell curve.)

"spacious, modern, quiet, affordable apartment"

Not quiet anywhere there is a Vietnamese neighborhood bc roosters, karaoke.  So towers or villa neighborhoods only, or adapt.

Spacious - 100+ sq meters? - is not affordable.

"not too too far from the center" (I corrected your spelling )

Then sorry Saigon is huge, you will be inside any green rural areas where anyway you will be pretty lonely, no one speaks english, no foreign food, poor people.

"access to fancy, organic, sometimes Western groceries"

Find Annam supermarkets on google maps

The list of wants seems to be unobtainable especially with regards to "green space". I have never seen any bucolic meadows in Saigon or South Vietnam except mountains. There are plenty of green swampy areas tho.

In the city, I recommend living near a park for green. Even a park on a busy road, if you walk 20 meters inside, the street noise levels drop dramatically, and cooler. I also recommend being walking distance near a mall and/or a grocery store. From your list, Go Vap (and nearby Phu Nhuan) is urban and more modern.   Thu Duc is another possibility, if living in upscale Thao Dien is not too far. There are scattered tower projects out there.

If. you are an english teacher, it would be cool if you came to District 8 though. We have a 9 year old in the house (not ours) learning english, and his teacher has no idea how to teach pronunciation. The poor kids could use the help. Rich kids in Go Vap can afford english centers.

you will be pretty lonely, no one speaks english, no foreign food, poor people.
-@gobot

I'm guessing that's definitely not going to work for him since what he has "seen (online and in English and mostly by expats, of course) of Vietnam's food culture fairly alienating..."

Yo Dusty. Congratulations on the job prospects. English teacher?
I've lived in D8 for years. Which building, please?
In the nicest terms, I describe D8 as an inner city neighborhood between 15 and 30 minutes to D1 depending. There are some rural parts on the fringes that are industrial or swamp and unlivable. The black water in the canal near our house is very stinky. It is a poor neighborhood, possibly the leading district for crime (theft not violence) in Saigon. Certainly the most morons and psychopaths on motorbikes. (Seriously. Think about it. Intelligence is a bell curve.)

"spacious, modern, quiet, affordable apartment"
Not quiet anywhere there is a Vietnamese neighborhood bc roosters, karaoke. So towers or villa neighborhoods only, or adapt.
Spacious - 100+ sq meters? - is not affordable.

"not too too far from the center" (I corrected your spelling )
Then sorry Saigon is huge, you will be inside any green rural areas where anyway you will be pretty lonely, no one speaks english, no foreign food, poor people.

"access to fancy, organic, sometimes Western groceries"
Find Annam supermarkets on google maps

The list of wants seems to be unobtainable especially with regards to "green space". I have never seen any bucolic meadows in Saigon or South Vietnam except mountains. There are plenty of green swampy areas tho.

In the city, I recommend living near a park for green. Even a park on a busy road, if you walk 20 meters inside, the street noise levels drop dramatically, and cooler. I also recommend being walking distance near a mall and/or a grocery store. From your list, Go Vap (and nearby Phu Nhuan) is urban and more modern.  Thu Duc is another possibility, if living in upscale Thao Dien is not too far. There are scattered tower projects out there.

If. you are an english teacher, it would be cool if you came to District 8 though. We have a 9 year old in the house (not ours) learning english, and his teacher has no idea how to teach pronunciation. The poor kids could use the help. Rich kids in Go Vap can afford english centers.
-@gobot

Centre,centre,centre.

Centre,centre,centre.
-@colinoscapee

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."-G.B. Shaw (possibly apocryphal)

I only drove through District 8 once when returning from points south.   I was struck by how relatively shabby it seemed.   If you look at the map, you might get the impression that the reason it surrounds the canal is that the adjacent districts wanted no part of that pollution.  At that time my wife repeated the local impression that it was a poor district with a lot of crime but, like a lot of such things that may be based more on frequent repetition than on actual fact.   I ordinarily wouldn't recommend Chris Lewis videos but this one is pretty much specific to D.8:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxXUoYw … ChrisLewis