Things to do
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Ben Thanh Market
A clock tower over the south gate marks the central market, trading under its present roof since 1914. Stalls sell lacquerware, coffee, textiles and copied labels, with a food aisle of noodle counters at the back. Haggling is expected and the lanes between the stalls are close and hot. Street traders take over the surrounding blocks once the hall shuts for the evening.
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Bitexco Financial Tower
Sixty-eight floors of glass with a helipad bracketed onto one flank, finished in 2010 and for a while the tallest building in Vietnam, since passed by Landmark 81 upriver. The Skydeck on the forty-ninth floor gives a full turn of the Saigon River, the roofs of District 1 and the endless motorbike traffic. Late afternoon into dusk is the hour worth queuing for.
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Cholon
Chinese merchants settled this quarter of Districts 5 and 6 long before the French arrived, and it still keeps its own rhythm: herbal medicine shops along Hai Thuong Lan Ong, temple courtyards hung with smouldering incense coils, and Binh Tay market under a yellow clock tower. Thien Hau temple draws most of the visitors. Mornings are the working hours, and the walking is long and shadeless.
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Cu Chi Tunnels
Viet Cong fighters dug this network into the hard clay northwest of the city and lived, cooked and fought underground for years. Two stretches are open to visitors: Ben Dinh, nearer and widened so broader shoulders fit, and Ben Duoc, further out and closer to the original bore. Half a day goes on the round trip. Anyone uneasy in tight spaces should skip the crawl.
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Independence Palace
Ngo Viet Thu designed this modernist government house in the 1960s for the president of South Vietnam, and a North Vietnamese tank came through its gates on 30 April 1975 to end the war. The state rooms are kept as they were found, down to the cabinet table and the rooftop helipad. In the basement the command bunker holds its radio sets and wall maps.
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Jade Emperor Pagoda
Cantonese migrants built this Taoist temple in 1909 and filled it with carved hardwood figures of the Jade Emperor's court, among them the gods who judge the dead, in incense smoke that never quite clears. A turtle pond sits inside the gate. It remains a working temple, busiest on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, and half an hour is enough.
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Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon
French builders raised this red brick cathedral from 1863, shipping the brick out from Marseille, and added the twin spires a decade later. Restoration has been running since 2017, so the towers wear scaffolding and the interior is shut to sightseeing, though mass is still said. New gilded crosses went up on the towers in the spring. The square in front stays open, and the exterior is what visitors come away with.
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Saigon Central Post Office
Still a working post office, the vaulted hall across the square from the cathedral keeps its tiled floor, its wooden telephone booths and two painted wall maps from the 1890s, one of the southern telegraph lines and one of Saigon and its rivers. A portrait of Ho Chi Minh hangs at the far end. Clerks take parcels at the back while visitors photograph the arches.
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War Remnants Museum
Captured American armour stands in the forecourt: tanks, a Huey helicopter, a jet fighter. Inside, three floors document the war from the Vietnamese side, with rooms given over to the photographers killed covering it and to the children born with Agent Orange injuries. Nothing is softened for foreign visitors. Two hours covers it, and the upper galleries are hard going.