Four days in Ho Chi Minh City: renamed in 1975, still Saigon to everyone

Three nights in Saigon, with the heavy history taken in one morning, the temples in another, and the evenings on the boulevard

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Ho Chi Minh City
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Everybody still calls it Saigon. The city was renamed in 1975 and the old name never went away, partly out of habit and partly because Saigon is what people mean when they mean the middle of it: District 1, the boulevards, the markets and the noise. It is Vietnam's biggest city and its business capital, and it feels nothing like Hanoi. It is younger, hotter, richer, ruder and much more fun after dark.

The sightseeing is concentrated. Almost everything worth an hour of your time is inside a two kilometre square around Nguyen Hue and Le Duan, and most of it can be walked between if you go early or late. The exceptions are the pagodas: the old Chinese temples of Cholon are five kilometres west, and the Jade Emperor Pagoda a couple north east, and both are worth the taxi.

Four days here is a day of orientation, a day on the war, a day on the older city, and a last morning that stays central. Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta are day trips of their own, and adding either honestly means adding a night.

Highlights

  • The War Remnants Museum, unflinching and told entirely from the Vietnamese side
  • Independence Palace, kept exactly as it was on the morning of 30 April 1975
  • The Jade Emperor Pagoda, dark, smoky and crowded with carved figures
  • Nguyen Hue at night, a pedestrian boulevard between the town hall and the river
  • Ben Thanh Market at dusk, when the food stalls take over the streets around it
  • The view from the Skydeck, with the whole delta flatness of the city laid out below

Where to stay

Ho Chi Minh City

Saigon is laid out around the river and the boulevards the French cut through it. District 1 holds the town hall, the cathedral, the old opera house and the towers that have gone up beside them, and the whole of the centre can be crossed on foot in half an hour if the heat allows. West of it, past the market, District 5 is Cholon, the Chinese quarter, which has the oldest temples in the city and almost none of the tourism.

The city has a shorter history than Hanoi or Hue and it does not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is the twentieth century in unusual concentration: a colonial administration, a wartime capital, a defeat, and then a thirty-year boom that has put a great deal of glass along the riverbank. Two museums and a palace cover most of it, and they are all within a few streets of each other.

Everything else here happens outdoors and after six. The boulevard fills up, the pavement kitchens put out their stools, the coffee shops on the upper floors of old apartment blocks open their shutters, and the temperature finally becomes reasonable. Plan the days around that rather than against it.

Day by day

Day 1 in Ho Chi Minh City

The Skydeck, Nguyen Hue and the old town hall

Get above it first. Saigon is flat, sprawling and hard to read from the ground, and twenty minutes on a viewing deck at the end of the afternoon does more for your sense of the place than a map will.

Then come down and walk. Nguyen Hue was a canal, then a boulevard, and since 2015 the central strip has been a pedestrian promenade running from the old town hall down to the river. It is the city's living room after dark: skateboarders, wedding photographers, students, families, coffee carts, and a great deal of standing about.

The cream and yellow building at the top of it is the former Hotel de Ville, built by the French and now the offices of the city's People's Committee. You cannot go in. You can look at it, lit up, from the boulevard, which is what everybody else is doing.

  1. 17:30

    Bitexco Financial Tower

    Architecture

    The Skydeck sits on the 49th floor of the tower with the helipad sticking out of its side, and it is open until well after dark. Go about an hour before sunset and stay for the lights.

  2. 19:00

    Nguyen Hue Flower Street

    Visit

    The pedestrian boulevard, at its best from seven onwards. During Tet it is planted end to end with flower displays and the crowd becomes shoulder to shoulder.

  3. 20:00

    People's Committee Hall

    Architecture

    Floodlit from dusk, with the statue of Ho Chi Minh in front of it and a permanent queue of people photographing each other. Exterior only, and two minutes from the boulevard.

  4. 20:45

    Dinner in District 1

    Eat

    The streets either side of the boulevard are full of pavement kitchens and rooftop bars. For a first night, a bowl of hu tieu Nam Vang or a plate of grilled pork and rice is the local answer.

With more time: The Saigon Opera House is a two minute walk away and worth checking for the same evening: the acrobatic AO show runs there regularly and needs no Vietnamese to follow. The backpacker strip on Bui Vien, fifteen minutes west on foot, is loud, cheap and not remotely subtle if that is the sort of night you want.

Day 2 in Ho Chi Minh City

The War Remnants Museum, Independence Palace and the cathedral

A hard morning, and worth doing in this order, because the palace makes far more sense once you have seen the museum.

The War Remnants Museum opened within months of the fall of Saigon and has never pretended to neutrality. Three floors cover the French war, the American one, chemical defoliants and their effects on later generations, and the photographers who died covering all of it. Captured aircraft, tanks and a helicopter sit in the courtyard. The Agent Orange rooms in particular are extremely difficult, and there is no shame in walking out of them.

Independence Palace is ten minutes away on foot and is the other half of the story. Built between 1962 and 1966 as the presidential palace of South Vietnam, it is preserved as it stood on 30 April 1975, when a North Vietnamese tank came through the gates. Reception rooms in gold and lacquer upstairs; a war room, a telex and a bunker of radio sets in the basement.

Finish at the cathedral, a few minutes further north, and the post office opposite it. The pair of them are the most photographed corner of the city and, after the morning, a relief.

  1. 09:00

    War Remnants Museum

    Culture

    Two hours, and go at opening while you still have the stamina for it. Captions are in English throughout. Not suitable for young children.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch near the palace

    Eat

    The streets between the museum and the palace have plenty of com tam and noodle shops, and a sit-down lunch in air conditioning is a reasonable idea before the afternoon.

  3. 13:30

    Independence Palace

    Historic

    Ninety minutes, including the basement, which is the best part. The tanks parked in the grounds are the ones from the photographs of 30 April 1975.

  4. 15:30

    Notre Dame Cathedral

    Religious

    The twin-spired brick cathedral the French finished in 1880. It has been under a long restoration and the interior is often closed, so treat the outside and the square as the visit.

With more time: Cu Chi is the obvious extension of this day and needs half a day of its own: the tunnel network north west of the city, part of it widened enough for visitors to crawl through. Tours leave every morning from District 1. Closer to hand, the monument to Thich Quang Duc, the monk who burned himself alive in protest in 1963, stands on the street corner where he did it, a short walk west of the palace.

Day 3 in Ho Chi Minh City

The Jade Emperor Pagoda, the history museum and Ben Thanh

The older, quieter city, and a day that goes north east before it comes back to the market.

The Jade Emperor Pagoda was built by Cantonese immigrants in 1909 and is the best temple in central Saigon: low, dark, thick with incense smoke, and packed with carved wooden figures of gods, generals and the guardians of hell. There is a pond of turtles outside and very little floor space inside. Take shoes off, keep the camera down when people are praying, and give it longer than it looks like it needs.

The history museum is a short ride further south, at the gate of the botanical gardens, and covers Vietnam from the bronze drums through Champa sculpture to the Nguyen dynasty. The Cham stone carving is the part people remember. The gardens and the zoo share the same entrance if you want somewhere shaded to sit afterwards.

Then Ben Thanh in the late afternoon. The market itself is touristy and the haggling is relentless, but the food counters inside are good, and the streets around it become an open-air kitchen once the stalls close.

  1. 08:30

    Jade Emperor Pagoda

    Religious

    Free, open all day, and busiest on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month when the smoke inside becomes genuinely thick. Look for the room of small painted figures depicting the levels of hell.

  2. 10:30

    Museum of Vietnamese History

    Culture

    An hour is enough unless you already know the dynasties, in which case it is two. Read a page on Vietnamese history first or the labels will not carry you.

  3. 16:30

    Ben Thanh Market

    Other

    The present hall dates from 1914 and the clock tower over the south gate is the city's usual meeting point. Prices start at several times what they should be, so halve the first number and walk if it does not move.

With more time: With a spare afternoon, go west to Cholon instead of back to the centre. The Chinese quarter has the oldest working temples in the city, an enormous wholesale market, and street after street of herbalists and gold shops, and almost nobody is there for the sightseeing.

Day 4 in Ho Chi Minh City

The Fine Arts Museum and the Hindu temple

Two central things and no taxi, which is the right shape for a last morning in a city where the airport road is unpredictable.

The Fine Arts Museum is worth going to as much for the building as the pictures. It was built in the 1930s for a Chinese-Vietnamese merchant family, and it has tiled floors, stained glass, an interior courtyard and one of the oldest lifts in the city. The collection runs from Cham stonework to lacquer and silk painting to the propaganda art of the war years, which is more interesting than that description makes it sound.

The Mariamman temple is a few minutes away, behind the market: a small, brightly painted Hindu shrine put up by Tamil traders in the late nineteenth century. Most of that community left in 1975 and the congregation today is largely Vietnamese, which makes it one of the odder and more likeable corners of District 1.

  1. 09:00

    Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts

    Culture

    Three buildings around a courtyard, and an hour and a half covers it comfortably. The upstairs galleries in the main house are the ones to prioritise if you are short of time.

  2. 11:00

    Mariamman Temple

    Religious

    Shoes off at the door, and a small donation is normal. Twenty minutes, and the marigolds and the incense outside are half the reason to go.

With more time: If the flight is late, the old apartment block at 42 Nguyen Hue is stacked with independent coffee shops on every floor and has a view down the boulevard from the upper balconies. A ca phe sua da, iced coffee poured over condensed milk, is the correct order.

Before you go

Getting in

Tan Son Nhat is Vietnam's busiest airport and sits unusually close to the city, about 7 km north of District 1, which in Saigon traffic still means half an hour or more. Taxis and ride-hailing cars use marked ranks; the air-conditioned airport buses are far cheaper, with the 109 express running to the centre and the 152 city bus doing the same journey for a few thousand dong.

Trains use Saigon railway station in District 3, roughly 3 km from the centre. Five services a day run north, and the sleeper to Da Nang or Hue is a real alternative to flying if you would rather not lose a day. Buy from the official Vietnam Railways site or at the station rather than from an agent on Pham Ngu Lao.

The city is also the usual land gateway to Cambodia, with buses to Phnom Penh taking most of a day, and the jumping-off point for the Mekong Delta.

Getting around

District 1 is walkable at the edges of the day and unpleasant in the middle of it. From about eleven to four the heat and the pavement traffic make anything over a kilometre a bad idea, so save the air-conditioned museums for those hours.

Metro Line 1 opened in December 2024 and runs from Ben Thanh Market north east to Suoi Tien in about half an hour, with trains every eight to twelve minutes from five in the morning until ten at night. Fares are distance-based, from 7,000 to 20,000 dong, and you can tap a contactless card at the gate. For a short visit it is useful mainly for the trip out towards Thu Duc; everything else is a taxi.

Use a ride-hailing app rather than flagging a car down. It fixes the fare, avoids the argument, and the motorbike option costs almost nothing for short hops if you are comfortable on the back of one. Crossing the road on foot works the same way as it does everywhere in Vietnam: steady pace, no stopping, no sudden moves.

When to go

The south has two seasons rather than four, and no cold one. December to April is dry and hot, with February and March the most comfortable and April the fiercest. May to November is the wet season, which in practice means a heavy downpour most afternoons rather than all-day rain, and it clears quickly.

Tet, the lunar new year in late January or February, shuts most of the city for a week. Nguyen Hue is turned into a flower street for it and is genuinely worth seeing, but museums close, restaurants close, and moving around the country becomes very hard.

Money, food and etiquette

The dong is cash for street food and markets, cards for hotels and restaurants. Bargaining is expected at Ben Thanh and not in shops with price tags. Tipping is not customary, though it is becoming normal in tourist restaurants.

The southern kitchen is sweeter and herbier than the north's, and the local speciality is hu tieu Nam Vang, a clear pork and prawn noodle soup with Cambodian and Chinese ancestry. Banh mi is at its best here too: the baguette is a French inheritance and the filling is entirely Vietnamese.

The war is not a conversational topic. It is called the American War here, and opinions on it inside a Vietnamese family are more complicated than a museum caption suggests. Look and read as much as you like, and let a local raise it if they want to.

Staying safe

Violent crime against visitors is rare. The common problems are pickpocketing and bags snatched by a passing motorbike, so carry a phone in a pocket, keep a bag on the pavement side, and do not walk along the kerb looking at a map.

Two scams turn up often enough to name. One is the friendly stranger who recognises you from the airport and invites you home to meet the family, which ends with a request for money. The other is the hotel that presses you to leave valuables in its safe and then finds some of them missing. Neither is dangerous, both are avoidable, and the answer to both is a polite no.

Saigon is not a beautiful city and it is not trying to charm anybody. It is fast, hot, commercial and unusually good at food, and four days is enough to stop finding it overwhelming and start finding it enjoyable.

From here the country opens up in three directions: the delta to the south west, the beaches and hill towns up the coast, and the old imperial cities in the middle. Whichever you pick, the night train and the one-hour flight are both cheap, and the flight is almost always the one people take.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is it called Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?
Officially Ho Chi Minh City since 1975, and Saigon in everyday speech, including by Vietnamese people. Saigon usually means District 1 and the central districts rather than the whole metropolitan area. Neither name will cause offence.
How many days do you need in Ho Chi Minh City?
Three full days covers the city itself without hurrying. Add a fourth if you want the Cu Chi tunnels, and a fifth or sixth if you want a night in the Mekong Delta rather than a rushed day trip to it.
Are the Cu Chi tunnels worth it?
Yes, if the war interests you at all. It is a half day trip north west of the city, with a stretch of tunnel widened for visitors, a firing range and a lot of context. Go in the morning and pair it with a museum afternoon rather than trying to add a palace to the same day.
Is Saigon safe for tourists?
Yes. Violent crime is rare and the usual problems are pickpocketing and snatch theft from motorbikes. Keep your phone away from the kerb, use ride-hailing apps rather than street taxis, and treat unsolicited friendliness from strangers with polite scepticism.
What is the best time of year to visit?
December to March, when it is dry and the heat is manageable. April is the hottest month of the year and May to November brings a heavy shower most afternoons, which is survivable but changes how much walking you will want to do.
Can I move the days around?
Yes. The only fixed point is that the palace and several of the museums stop admitting visitors in the middle of the afternoon, so they belong in a morning or an early afternoon rather than at the end of a day.