Day trips from Saigon, ranked by what the traffic costs

Every day trip from Ho Chi Minh City is mostly road. Saigon has no ring of easy sights the way Hanoi does. The four places worth going sit 50 to 100 km out, through traffic that decides how long that takes.

So the honest question is not which trip is most famous. It is which one gives most back for three hours in a car.

Which day trip should you take?

The Mekong Delta if you want a landscape the city cannot show you, and Cu Chi if the war is the reason you came. Two days cover the city itself, as the Saigon hub says, which is why the third day usually becomes one of these day trips from Ho Chi Minh City.

What is Cu Chi actually like?

Short, and preceded by a long drive. The tunnel complex sits about 70 km north-west of the centre, which is one and a half to three hours each way depending on the traffic, and the site opens at 7am and stops selling tickets at 4pm.

The visit takes a couple of hours: a film, the trapdoors, a crawl through a widened section, and a firing range whose noise carries across the whole site. It is worth doing once. Cu Chi is one of four places where this history is presented very differently, which the war sites guide sets out in full.

Leave at six if you can. The difference between arriving at seven and arriving at nine is the difference between a quiet site and a queue at every trapdoor.

Is the delta day trip the real delta?

No, and it is still worth taking. A day tour around My Tho or Ben Tre delivers an orchard, a sampan ride through a palm canal, a coconut-candy workshop and lunch. All of it is busy, and all of it is genuinely of the region.

What no day tour delivers is the delta's mornings. The floating markets work at dawn, which no day trip from Saigon reaches, and that is the argument for the three-day delta route instead. Take the day trip if the delta is a curiosity, and give it nights if it is a reason.

What about Can Gio?

The quiet one. Can Gio is a mangrove biosphere reserve about 50 km south-east, reached by a ferry across the Soai Rap river. Tay Ninh, in the other direction, holds the Cao Dai Holy See and pairs with Cu Chi on the standard tour. It holds boat channels through the mangroves, a former guerrilla base in the forest, and an island of macaques that will take anything not zipped shut.

Almost no foreign visitors go, which is most of its appeal. Can Gio is also the least polished of the four. Signage is thin, lunch is basic, and the monkeys are a nuisance rather than an attraction.

Is Vung Tau worth the journey?

For a beach day and for the boat. Vung Tau is about 100 km south-east, two hours by road, or 90 minutes by hydrofoil down the river, and the hydrofoil is the better half of the trip.

The town is where Saigon goes at weekends, so a Saturday is crowded and a Tuesday is half empty. Back Beach is the swimmable stretch, and the statue on the hill is the standard walk — about 800 steps up, and a staircase inside the figure to the arms.

How should you travel?

A car with a driver, split between three or four people, rather than a coach seat. It costs a little more, it leaves when you want, and the extra hour at the start of the day is worth more than the saving. The transport guide covers what that costs against the alternatives.

For Vung Tau take the hydrofoil in at least one direction. For Can Gio the ferry is part of the trip. For Cu Chi, the river boat tours that return by road cost more and are the most pleasant version of a drive nobody enjoys.

What should you not do?

Cu Chi and the delta on the same day. Tours sell the combination, it involves about six hours in a vehicle, and both halves arrive at their worst hour.

Pick one, leave early, and give the evening back to the city. Saigon rewards its evenings more than its mornings, which the three-day route is built around. A day trip that ends at 20:00 has eaten the part of the city worth staying for.