I live in Hanoi permanently right now. I spent some time based down in Saigon before this. Honestly, looking back at it, they feel like two different countries sometimes.

Hanoi is all about narrow alleys, walking around the lakes, and actually having winter. Saigon is just a massive sprawl of concrete. It is hot every single day of the year. There are no quiet lakes to stroll around in the center, and the traffic moves way faster.

People search for stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city expecting me to send them some perfect walking route. You really shouldn’t plan long walking days here. Motorbikes park across the entire sidewalk so you end up walking on the actual street. The sun is punishing by 10 AM.

It’s a lot of noise, dirt, and money changing hands. You either hate the chaos or you kinda learn how to just ride along with it.

Here’s my personal list of how you actually navigate the city. I’m skipping all the generic travel brochure advice because a lot of the highly rated spots online are actually pretty annoying in person.

Quick Answer: The best stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city is a mix of heavy war history, intense coffee culture, and loud street seafood. Skip walking long distances in the 35-degree heat; instead, use Grab bikes to hop between District 1 museums, District 5 markets, and District 4 snail stalls.
The Historical Core (District 1 & 3)
- War Remnants Museum & Independence Palace: Heavy but mandatory history. Go in the morning (tickets: 40k–65k VND) to beat the tour groups and the midday sun.
- 42 Nguyen Hue Cafe Apartments: A brutalist apartment block converted into cool indie cafes. Pay the 3,000 VND elevator fee and walk down the stairs to explore.
Real Local Trade & Street Food
- District 5 (Cholon): Skip the expensive, aggressive haggling at Ben Thanh Market. Head to Binh Tay Market in Chinatown to see real wholesale trading.
- District 4 (Vinh Khanh Street): The ultimate spot for cheap, loud street seafood and snails (oc) served on low plastic stools.
Nightlife & Craft Beer
- Avoid Bui Vien: It is a deafening, chaotic tourist trap.
- Go Craft: Hit up quiet, air-conditioned alley taprooms like Bia Craft East West Brewing or Heart of Darkness for high-quality local IPAs.
Survival & Transit Logistics
- Transportation: Download the Grab app. Book motorbikes over cars to cut through gridlock traffic.
- Safety: Keep your phone zipped in your pocket to prevent common drive-by phone snatching on street corners.
- Cu Chi Tunnels: Skip the chaotic street booking agents. Book online to visit the less-crowded Ben Duoc tunnels instead of the touristy Ben Dinh site.

Short Videos

The historical stuff you kinda have to do

So obviously, the Vietnam war history is heavy here. You can’t come and just drink coffee and ignore what happened. I usually tell friends flying in to group these two places together on their first morning.

Don’t go in the afternoon, because the heat combined with the emotional toll is a bit much.

War Remnants Museum

(District 3. Ticket is around 40,000 VND / $1.60)

It gets crowded. School kids, tour buses, everyone comes here. Out front they parked captured American tanks and helicopters. It looks pretty standard at first.

When you get inside, it’s mostly a massive photography exhibit. It’s hard to look at, honestly. They have sections on Agent Orange and some pretty graphic shots taken by photographers who died on the battlefield.

The wording on the signs is strongly anti-American government, which makes sense. I see a lot of tourists get pretty quiet on the top floor. It takes about an hour and a half to walk through.

Independence Palace

(District 1. Ticket is roughly 65,000 VND / $2.60)

You can just walk to this from the museum. It’s the big building where the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates in 1975 to end the war.

What I find weird but cool about this place is that nobody renovated it. It looks exactly like it did in the 70s. Ugly green carpets, big wooden radios, huge conference tables. The tour guides they offer at the door are usually bored, so I just buy the regular ticket and walk around by myself. Make sure you walk down the back stairs into the basement. That was the command bunker. The walls are thick concrete and the old communication gear is still bolted to the tables.

Independence Palace 2 scaled Vietadvisor

Side note: if you’re trying to figure out how many days you need for this stuff, I put together my thoughts over on this How many days in Ho Chi Minh city guide.

A quick word on the other famous attractions

If you look at any map of stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city, it’ll point you to a few other French colonial buildings right in the center. You can honestly knock these out in about 30 minutes total because they are literally across the street from each other.

Everyone goes to look at the Notre Dame Cathedral of Saigon. Here is the reality check: it has been undergoing a massive renovation for years now. The whole thing is basically wrapped in heavy scaffolding and metal fences. You can’t go inside. So just take a quick look at the brickwork from the outside and immediately turn around to face the Central Post Office.

The Post Office is actually worth walking into. It’s this massive, bright yellow colonial building built in the late 1800s. The inside looks like an old European train station with a huge arched ceiling. They still operate it as a normal post office, so you’ll see tourists buying postcards and locals just shipping random boxes.

Look at the giant painted historical maps on the walls right when you walk in. It’s free to enter, takes 15 minutes to see, and the ceiling fans give you a nice break from the sun.

Notre Dame Cathedral of Saigon scaled Vietadvisor

Notre Dame Cathedral of Saigon 2 scaled Vietadvisor

If you have extra time and want a photo, take a Grab bike to District 3 to see Tan Dinh Church. Everyone just calls it the Pink Church. The entire exterior is painted in a ridiculously bright pastel pink. It stands out like crazy against the normal concrete traffic outside. You usually can’t walk inside the actual church unless there’s a mass happening, but people just stand across the street near the market to take photos of the tower.

Tan Dinh Pink Church from Cong Cafe 5 scaled Vietadvisor

Tan Dinh Pink Church from Cong Cafe 3 scaled Vietadvisor

Escaping the heat and the coffee apartment thing

By the time you finish looking at old war bunkers, you will be sweating through your shirt. Things to do in Ho Chi Minh city basically revolve around dodging the sun between 1 PM and 4 PM. Everyone here runs on coffee. Not the quiet sit-down type, more like intense caffeine rushes on the side of the road.

If you just order standard coffee on the street it’s Ca phe sua da (iced coffee with condensed milk). They give you mostly ice, super thick coffee, and way too much sugar milk.

But if you want a place to sit, you’ll probably end up near the Walking Street (Nguyen Hue). There’s this old, broken down looking residential block right on the main drag at number 42 Nguyen Hue.

Over the last few years, residents realized they could make more money renting their tiny apartments to hipsters. So the whole building is just dozens of random independent cafes, clothing shops, and nail salons shoved into apartment slots.

At night from the street it looks crazy because every balcony has different colored neon lights and decor.

Just a warning, when you walk in past the bookstore at the bottom, some guy sitting on a stool will make you pay him 3,000 VND just to use the old elevator. Just hand him the change. It’s annoying but whatever. Some of the cafes on the 6th or 8th floor will refund you the 3k if you show the little receipt when you buy a drink.

The drinks cost like 60,000 to 80,000 VND here. Take the elevator up to a high floor, get a drink with aircon, and then just walk down the dark dirty stairs to check out the other floors on your way out.

Where to not shop, and where you actually should go

Google searches always tell people to go to Ben Thanh Market in District 1.

Look, Ben Thanh is a trap. I walk through it sometimes just if it’s raining and I need a shortcut. The vendors see foreigners and instantly quote a price like 400% higher than reality for a cheap t-shirt. And if you try to haggle down to a normal price, some of the older sellers get legit angry and wave you off.

It’s not a fun bartering experience, it’s just stressful.

Go to District 5 (Cho Lon)

If you want to put weird stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city on your list, take a Grab bike out to District 5. This is the Chinatown area. It takes like 20 minutes from the center.

They don’t care about tourists here because they deal in wholesale. You can walk around Binh Tay market and it’s mostly locals buying 50-kilogram bags of dried mushrooms, massive stacks of bowls, or rolls of fabric.

It’s chaotic. Guys push metal carts down narrow alleys yelling at people to move out of the way.

The architecture is also much older out here, weird faded yellow buildings and a few random Chinese temples stuffed between auto-repair shops. It smells like roasted duck and motorbike exhaust. Walk down Hai Thuong Lan Ong street just to see the traditional medicine shops piling tree roots on the pavement.

Food: Why I skip D1 and eat snails in District 4

There is a ton of good food in District 1, don’t get me wrong. But because of rent, restaurants are pretty modern and expensive now. A banh mi at the famous Huynh Hoa place is nearly 70,000 VND now just because everyone goes there. Sure, it’s got half a pig of meat stuffed in the bread and it’s tasty, but I like sitting on plastic chairs for dinner.

Get out of D1 at night. The main thing I do when I go back down south is eat street seafood. Grab a bike over to Vinh Khanh street in District 4.

District 4 used to be a super sketchy area across the canal where the mafia ran things years ago. Now it’s just dense residential housing. Vinh Khanh is a long street that basically turns into a massive outdoor seafood restaurant after dark. It’s bright, there’s too much noise, sometimes kids blow fire out of their mouths for tips while you eat.

You don’t need to speak Vietnamese. You literally just walk up to the steel tables out front covered in ice and point. Point at a pile of razor clams, then point to garlic. Sit down. Some teenager will bring you a bucket of ice for your beer and five minutes later a plate of food gets dropped down.

Grab mud snails cooked in tamarind sauce. Clams in lemongrass broth. Peanuts on top of everything. Wipe your hands on tissues, throw the shells under the table. Dinner costs maybe 200,000 VND for a bunch of plates. It’s grimy but it’s way more fun than sitting in a quiet bistro.

If you have zero idea how street ordering works, I did write up a whole thing on How to eat Saigon street food.

The Nightlife situation

So sooner or later your plans for stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city will bump into Bui Vien street.

I’ll admit I used to go there when I was broke and wanted cheap beer, but now it’s basically an unlivable nightmare. It’s the designated foreigner party street.

Every single bar has like four massive concert speakers pointing directly out onto the pavement. When you walk down the road, three different types of techno music hit you from different angles so loud it actually makes your chest hurt.

The middle of the road is packed with promoters shoving menus at you and random guys selling happy balloons to kids looking miserable. Just walk through it once to see how insane the capitalistic overload looks, don’t sit down.

If you eat the BBQ sticks being sold off metal carts at the end of the street, you’ll probably regret it the next morning.

Where I go to drink instead

The saving grace of this city is that the local craft beer scene got really good a few years ago. There are actual microbreweries hiding down small residential alleys.

I go to Bia Craft East West Brewing mostly. Their main spot is near Ben Thanh, shoved down an alley and up a metal staircase. It’s cramped but the air-con works.

You’ll pay western prices (around 100k – 140k for a pint) which feels expensive for Vietnam, but getting off the noisy streets into a quiet room with heavy doors to just drink a strong IPA is usually exactly what I need by day two.

Heart of Darkness on Ly Tu Trong street is good too, bigger bar area, usually packed with expats escaping their apartments. Sometimes I just prefer doing regular normal stuff after getting exhausted from walking in the dirt all day.

Bia Craft East West Brewing 3 scaled Vietadvisor

Bia Craft East West Brewing 2 scaled Vietadvisor

Taking a day trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels

Usually, after three days in the center grid, you just get tired of scooters. Searching up things to do in Ho Chi Minh city inevitably points you out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. It’s essentially half a day gone, but yeah, it’s interesting.

The Viet Cong dug hundreds of miles of tiny tunnels under the ground by hand. It let them live out there, plan ambushes, and disappear when bombs dropped. You actually get to crawl inside the tunnels now, though they dug some wider specifically so larger westerners wouldn’t get completely stuck in the dirt.

How to book it without annoying haggling:

If you walk down Pham Ngu Lao street, there are 50 small desks trying to sell you bus tickets out to the tunnels. I hate haggling over minor sums of money with street agents who promise AC on a bus that actually has none.

Pham Ngu Lao street there are 50 small desks trying to sell you bus tickets 2 scaled Vietadvisor

Pham Ngu Lao street there are 50 small desks trying to sell you bus tickets 3 scaled Vietadvisor

These days I strictly recommend people use tour booking apps because the prices are fixed and there are actual user reviews to read if the bus breaks down often. You can honestly just book a Cu Chi half day tour on Getyourguide here or look it up on Klook before you arrive.

There’s a catch though. The cheapest buses take you to the “Ben Dinh” tunnel section. It’s fine, but it’s massively crowded with large groups and kind of feels like a theme park at times. If you check options, see if you can book a slightly smaller tour heading to “Ben Duoc” instead. Ben Duoc is a bit further down the road, there are less mega-buses, and the tunnel stretches feel way more real.

Either way, you end the tour basically the same. There’s a literal shooting range out the back of the jungle path where you pay like 60,000 VND per bullet, grab heavy ear protection, and fire real assault rifles into dirt banks. It is weird and loud to transition from solemn war history right into an amateur gun club, but that’s just how they run it. Then you sit on a bus for an hour back into city traffic.

If you got more time, maybe see my thoughts on Is it worth doing Cu Chi Tunnels & Mekong Delta in a day?

Taking a day trip to the Cu Chi Ben Duoc Tunnels 2 scaled Vietadvisor

Taking a day trip to the Cu Chi Ben Duoc Tunnels scaled Vietadvisor

Let’s talk about basic survival out there

If you come here reading the generic blogs you’re gonna think everything is vibrant and charming. Reality is slightly different.

Keep your phone put away

A huge problem down in District 1, particularly for tourists walking on corners, is phone snatching. Two guys on a generic Honda Wave will drive up quietly onto the sidewalk. You’re holding your iPhone 17 out with one loose hand trying to figure out Google Maps. They swipe it from your grip without slowing down and speed back into traffic.

If you need the map, stand back against a solid building wall and hold the phone with both hands. Or just buy a cheap phone lanyard. Also ladies, keep bags cross-body, not dangling off one shoulder. The crime isn’t violent usually, it’s purely crimes of opportunity and they are insanely fast.

Downloading Grab is basically mandatory

Taxis waiting outside hotels or markets will try to charge you a flat fee without running a meter. The flat fee is always stupid.

Make sure you download Grab (the local Uber app) while you still have decent WiFi. It’s how you get everywhere.

As I mentioned earlier, if you order a car it gets stuck in traffic. At 5:30 PM, whole city blocks freeze completely with car traffic while the mopeds just drive straight up onto the pedestrian pathways to get around.

Order a Grab bike instead. The driver pulls up in a green jacket and gives you a slightly smelly half-helmet. You hop on the back. It looks terrifying when they plunge straight into busy intersections with zero traffic lights, but they somehow know how to just glide through.

Never yell at the driver to slow down if traffic is crazy, the way you survive intersections here is by not braking suddenly.

If you book trips from the airport on your first day, there is a massive messy pickup lane for rideshares in the Tan Son Nhat parking garage. I made a whole checklist on that exact problem here: Arriving at Saigon airport guide.

To summarize how I do three days here:

Basically if a friend crashed at my place for a few nights in town, the rough breakdown for our stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city is:

Day 1: War Remnants Museum in the morning. Pho for lunch near the palace. Check out the cafe apartments at Nguyen Hue. Just get a feel for the awful traffic and humidity. Maybe grab craft beer later on to escape the noise.
Day 2: Skip District 1 shopping and take a bike straight into District 5 for wholesale market madness and eating weird snacks from the local carts. Evening goes directly to Vinh Khanh in District 4 for massive piles of messy shell-cracking seafood on a low stool.
Day 3: Day trip out to Cu Chi Tunnels. You leave early, come back around 2 or 3 PM smelling like damp earth and gun powder. Go take a massive shower and go back out into some hidden coffee shops hidden in older apartment blocks like Thai Van Lung area before flying out.

I’ll admit, Hanoi feels more historically traditional. Saigon is pure hustle. The money is louder here, the drinks have more sugar in them, the distances are too huge to just amble through without purpose.

You sweat, you complain about the scooter noise at 2 AM, but sitting out on an empty alley corner with bad posture having some cheap chicken rice makes it all oddly bearable.

Plan a little bit, book a hotel with good AC, and expect to feel gross immediately after stepping outside. That’s just Saigon.

From the field

My expat guide to stuff to do in Ho Chi Minh city