Things to do in Ho Chi Minh City, by half-day

The things to do in Ho Chi Minh City are not what you would call sights, at least not in the way Hanoi or Hue offer them. It has four or five things genuinely worth an hour each, and then it has evenings, which is what people actually remember.

What should you do in Saigon?

The War Remnants Museum in the morning, the colonial buildings as a single walk, the coffee apartment at some point, and then eat. The hub page covers the districts and how long to stay.

Most things to do in Ho Chi Minh City sit inside District 1 and District 3, within a twenty-minute walk of each other. That compactness is why two days works here even though the city is enormous.

Which museum, if only one?

The War Remnants Museum. It presents the war from the Vietnamese side with very little softening, and the photojournalism floor is the part that stays with people.

Go in the morning. It is a hard hour and you want the rest of the day afterwards rather than dinner immediately. The war sites guide covers how the war is presented across the country, which is worth reading before rather than after.

The Reunification Palace is the other one worth the ticket. It is the presidential palace left largely as it was in April 1975, down to the wall maps and the rotary telephones.

The basement command rooms are the part most people remember, and they are easy to walk past. Allow an hour rather than the thirty minutes most itineraries give it.

What is the colonial walk?

Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office and the Opera House sit within a few hundred metres of each other, and forty-five minutes covers all three at a stroll.

The cathedral has been under restoration for years and the interior is often closed; the post office is still a working post office and the more interesting of the two. Nguyen Hue, the wide pedestrian street running down to the river, starts here. What the buildings are and how much of the period survives elsewhere is in the colonial architecture guide.

What is the coffee apartment?

An old residential block at 42 Nguyen Hue where the flats have mostly turned into cafes, one per balcony, stacked nine floors up over the walking street. A small charge covers the lift.

The coffee apartment is the cheapest good view in the city and a genuinely odd building. The coffee guide explains what to order once you are up there.

Should you go to Cu Chi?

Once, if the war interests you at all. The tunnel system is about 60 km northwest and the visit takes half a day, including a crawl through a section widened for visitors.

Go on the first departure. By ten the site is full and the tunnels are a queue. Many trips pair it with the Cao Dai temple at Tay Ninh further north, which makes a long but efficient day.

What about the markets?

Ben Thanh is a landmark rather than a market: prices are set for visitors and the selling is hard work. Walk through it, buy little.

Binh Tay in Cholon, the Chinese quarter in District 6, is the working version — wholesale, chaotic, and largely indifferent to you. The night market that sets up around Ben Thanh after six is the better evening option of the two.

What does the city do after dark?

Eats, mostly, and this is the real answer to what to do here. Street kitchens set up from late afternoon across District 3 and District 4, and the what to eat guide covers which dishes belong to this city specifically.

Bui Vien is the loud option and it is very loud — the where to stay page explains why sleeping one street back from it matters. Rooftop bars are the other end of the same evening, and the three-day route sets out how to fit both.