Top 10 Things to Do in Saigon | The War, the Food, the Delta Trap

The thing this city asks of you

Saigon is fast, hot and commercial, and the food is superb. It is also the one place on this site that asks something of Australians specifically.

Australia fought in Vietnam. Almost sixty thousand Australians served, and a great many Australians alive today have a direct family connection to it.

Then you arrive here and the war is presented, entirely reasonably, from the winning side's perspective, in a country that regards it as a war of independence and has moved on far more completely than we have.

That is not a reason to avoid it. It is one of the more valuable things an Australian can do in South East Asia, and it is worth planning the days around rather than slotting between shopping. Ask us about Vietnam.

The ten

1. A motorbike food tour

The best paid experience in this city, and yes, you ride pillion.

Someone who knows the place takes you to five stops in two hours across districts you would never find, and it solves the language, the ordering and the navigation in a single purchase. If you do one guided thing in Saigon, do this. Compare motorbike food tours on Viator.

2. The War Remnants Museum

The confrontation, and it is deliberate.

It is one-sided and it says so with its exhibits rather than its labels. The photography on the upper floors, particularly the material on chemical defoliants, is deeply distressing. Two hours. Not for children.

Go anyway.

3. The Cu Chi tunnels

A couple of hours out and worth the day. The network was enormous, the ingenuity was extraordinary, and the sections open to visitors have been widened for larger bodies, which tells you something about the originals.

There is a firing range at the end where you can pay to shoot a rifle, which strikes many visitors as a strange note to finish on, and you are entirely free to walk past it. If you are claustrophobic, do not go into the tunnel section; nobody will mind and the site is still worth the trip. Find Cu Chi trips on Klook.

4. The Reunification Palace

The building the tanks crashed through on the day the war ended, preserved exactly as it was, right down to the maps on the walls in the war room downstairs.

Quieter than the other two, and the one that sits with you.

5. Cholon, for a half-day

The best half-day in Saigon and almost nobody bothers.

District 5, the old Chinese quarter, and it is a genuinely different city: temples thick with hanging incense coils burning overhead, herbalists, a wholesale market, and a rhythm that has nothing to do with the tourist centre.

Mostly on foot, mostly getting lost.

6. Bánh mì, from a cart

The best thing colonialism ever accidentally produced: a French baguette rebuilt with Vietnamese lungs. Pâté, cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon, coriander, chilli, a smear of mayonnaise.

From a cart, not a shop.

7. Cà phê sữa đá

Iced coffee with condensed milk, made with robusta rather than arabica, and strong enough that a second one is a genuine decision.

Vietnam's coffee culture is one of the world's great ones and Saigon is its capital.

8. A rooftop at dusk

Unlike most cities, these are not a tourist tax.

The city from above at dusk, with the motorbike rivers moving in the streets below, is a legitimate experience. It is the thing Saigon does better than anywhere else in Vietnam.

9. Cơm tấm for lunch

Broken rice with a grilled pork chop and a fried egg, and it is the lunch of this city. Plastic stool, no menu in English, and better than the restaurant with the photographs forty metres away.

10. The Central Post Office and the cathedral

A French colonial pair in the middle of District 1 and they take fifteen minutes between them.

The post office is genuinely lovely and still works as a post office, which is the charm. Send something.

The Mekong Delta trap

The most-sold and least-good thing in southern Vietnam, and it deserves its own section because you will be offered it hourly.

The standard day trip: three hours in a bus each way, a boat with a hundred people on it, a coconut-candy workshop, a bee farm, a man playing a guitar, and back. It is not offensive. It is just not anything, and it costs a full day.

The Delta itself is wonderful. It is a genuinely different Vietnam: water instead of roads, floating markets that start before dawn and are finished by eight, houses on stilts, a pace that belongs to a river.

But it is wonderful over two days with a night in it, ideally a homestay, and it is wonderful because you are there at five in the morning when the market happens, which is the exact hour a day trip cannot deliver.

So the recommendation is binary: two days and a night, or skip it entirely. The middle option, which is the one every booking desk will sell you, is the one to refuse. Our Ho Chi Minh City travel guide makes the same argument.

The districts, briefly

Saigon numbers its districts rather than naming them, which sounds bureaucratic and is actually the clearest addressing system in the region.

District 1 is the centre, where most visitors stay, and it has the least interesting food in the city. District 3 is next door, quieter, and where the good eating is. District 5 is Cholon.

So: sleep in District 1 if it is your first trip, and eat in District 3 and Cholon, both of which are twenty minutes and a different world.

What to skip

Ben Thanh Market. Famous, and a tourist market. Twenty minutes to see it, buy nothing at the first price, and know that the food stalls around the outside are better than the ones inside.

The Delta day trip. See above.

Scheduling anything after the war museum. That is a real recommendation. Give the rest of that day to a rooftop and a long dinner.

And the visa, before anything

Not a things-to-do matter and the most important thing on any Vietnam page.

Australians generally need a visa arranged before you fly, most commonly the e-visa online. Vietnam does not wave us through on arrival, and the airline checks it at Sydney check-in. Our Sydney to Ho Chi Minh City page leads with this for a reason.

Booking notes

Prices shown by our partners are live and in your choice of currency, most activities confirm instantly, and free cancellation windows are stated on each listing. Little here needs booking far ahead: the museums, the markets and the carts are simply there. The motorbike food tour is worth arranging a few days out because the good small operators fill, and a proper two-day Delta trip needs planning rather than a shopfront.

The construction worth asking about is the open jaw: into Hanoi and home from Saigon, or the reverse, so you never backtrack. Get a free Vietnam quote.