If you arrive at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut International Airport or main railway station with a rucksack on your shoulders, the waiting taxi and cyclo drivers will automatically offer to take you to De Tham Street, the center of Saigon's burgeoning budget traveler district. This district actually consists of three streets intersecting in an H-shape, with De Tham the bar of the H, and Bui Vien and Pham Ngu Lao Streets the legs. Travelers from all over the world converge on this area and it is rapidly becoming one of the great crossroads of Asia. If you are backpacking across the continent, and you meet some traveling Swedes, Brits or Germans in Bangkok, Bali or Bombay, there is an excellent chance that you'll run into them again on De Tham Street for Vietnam has become the trendiest of destinations. All backpackers want to go there and once in country, a sizable percentage of them spend time on De Tham Street.

For the hungry budget traveler, De Tham fries, boils and bakes just about anything you could want to eat. Street stalls, cafes and restaurants prepare everything from springrolls to pizza. There is Sinh Cafe, Kim's Cafe, the Cafe 2, Coffee 2 and the Ly Ly Cafe, which proudly proclaims itself to be the home of the Hoang Khang Burger. Printed in English, sometimes French and always in Vietnamese, the menus offer a cheap variety of foods. A substantial breakfast of an omelet and baguette with strong filtered coffee can easily be found for less than a U.S. dollar. Lunch and dinner prices vary, depending on what and where you eat, but no place on De Tham will bust your budget. You won't run out of dining options either; you can eat Thai, Italian, Indian, Vietnamese, American and unique plates that fuse two or more of the above culinary traditions. For example, De Tham establishments whip up such specialties as curried spaghetti, burgers served on baguettes with La Vache Qui Rit spreadable fromage, and French-fries doused in Cholimex chili sauce.

The thirsty traveler will not be disappointed either for the beer on De Tham Street is cold, cheap, tasty and plentiful. You can get big bottles of BGI, Tiger, Heineken, San Miguel, 333 Export and Bia Saigon for 10,000 dong apiece; if you don't mind slightly flat beer you can try bia hoi, which is the no-name draft brew that sells for 8,000 dong a liter--and that's the tourist price.* In contrast, a dinky can of beer on the upmarket Rex Hotel's rooftop terrace will put you back 32,000 dong.

For a happy hour beer on De Tham Street my favorite place remained the 333 Cafe, a friendly little hole in the wall named for the beer that its thirsty customers guzzled so enthusiastically. In the 333 Cafe a never-ending procession of local children wandered in and out peddling shoeshines, chewing gum, postcards and cigarette lighters shaped like hand-grenades. Travelers swapped tales of the road, pored over their Lonely Planet guidebooks and bought each other rounds. If I wanted it, I never lacked for conversation in the 333 Cafe. Like me, many of its patrons were traveling alone and eager for company. They were curious about their fellow backpackers and interested in obtaining useful travel tips. Best of all, everyone had a story to tell.

Aside from abundant bars, restaurants and cafes, an ever-increasing number of hotels and guesthouses crowds the De Tham area. Prices vary widely, are invariably quoted in dollars and depend on the time of year and your bargaining skills. Dorm beds can be had for a few dollars; rooms start at about $6 and top out at about $15. Room quality oscillates wildly from guesthouse to guesthouse, and as I discovered, it pays to shop around.