Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City is the kind of metropolis that wears two names openly. Its formal title since 2 July 1976 is Hồ Chí Minh City, but the residents and even the airport code (SGN) still call it Saigon, and the central district (Quận 1, District 1) is universally referred to as Sài Gòn in everyday speech. The city is much larger than Hanoi — around 9 million in the urban core and 17 million in the wider metro region — and much more commercial: Vietnam's stock exchange, the country's biggest banks, the bulk of foreign direct investment, and the headquarters of the great national breweries (Saigon Beer, 333) all sit within a few kilometres of central District 1. The colonial grain is the densest in the country. Saigon was the capital of French Cochinchina from 1862, and the broad boulevards (Đồng Khởi, Lê Lợi, Nguyễn Huệ pedestrianised since 2015), the cast-iron and brick of the Saigon Central Post Office (designed by Auguste Foulhoux and built 1886–1891 — not, as the most-repeated guidebook myth claims, by Gustave Eiffel), the Romanesque-Revival Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica (1880, now in major restoration scheduled to run through 2027), the Opera House on Lam Son Square (1900, modelled on the Petit Palais in Paris), the Hôtel Continental (1880, where Graham Greene wrote much of *The Quiet American*), the Hôtel Caravelle (1959, base for the foreign press during the Vietnam War) and the Hôtel Rex (whose rooftop bar saw the daily US-press briefings nicknamed the 'Five o'Clock Follies') are all within 500 metres of each other. Three blocks west, the Reunification Palace (still officially Dinh Độc Lập, 'Independence Palace'), the seat of the Republic of Vietnam government from 1962 to 1975, has been preserved as a Cold-War-era time capsule — the bedrooms, war rooms and helipad are exactly as on 30 April 1975, when North Vietnamese tank 843 rammed through the gate. Two blocks north of the palace, the War Remnants Museum (28 Võ Văn Tần, opened September 1975) is the country's most-visited museum and the indispensable single-stop for the war's photo-journalism record. Beyond District 1, Saigon's other essential quarters: District 5 — Chợ Lớn — is the historic Chinese quarter, denser, slightly grittier, with the Bình Tây Market (1928), the great Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka pagodas (Thiên Hậu, Quan Âm, Phước An Hội Quán), and food that runs Cantonese to Teochew. District 3, just west of District 1, holds the Jade Emperor Pagoda (Phước Hải Tự, 1909, Hanoi's Anthony Bourdain visited but it was Saigon's Barack Obama stopped in May 2016), the Mariamman Hindu Temple, and the embassy quarter. Districts 2 and 7 (Thảo Điền and Phú Mỹ Hưng) are the contemporary, expat-tilted parts of the city, with the riverfront skyline of Landmark 81 (Vietnam's tallest building, 461 m, completed 2018) on one bank and the Bitexco Financial Tower's Saigon Skydeck on the other. The Mekong Delta — Mỹ Tho, Bến Tre, Cần Thơ — and the Củ Chi tunnel network 50 km north-west are the canonical day trips. Vietnamese cuisine in Saigon leans south — sweeter, more herb-forward, more reliant on fish sauce and lime — and the dish identities are different from Hanoi: phở at Phở Hòa Pasteur and Phở Quỳnh; bún bò Huế (Central Vietnamese, but Saigon does it well at Bún Bò Đông Ba); cơm tấm (broken-rice with grilled pork); bánh mì at Hùynh Hoa, Bánh Mì 37 Nguyễn Trãi and Bánh Mì Phượng (Hoi An's most famous, with Saigon outposts); cà phê sữa đá (iced milk coffee, with sweetened condensed milk, born here and not in Hanoi); chè (sweet dessert soups in District 5). Vietnam opened a single-list e-Visa in August 2023 — applicable to citizens of all countries and territories with very few exceptions — and Tan Son Nhat International Airport (SGN, 7 km north of District 1) is the country's busiest airport, with direct flights from Frankfurt, Paris CDG, London Heathrow, Doha, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Los Angeles and most of Asia. Metro Line 1 (Bến Thành – Suối Tiên) opened on 22 December 2024 — 19.7 km, 14 stations, end-to-end in 30 minutes — connecting District 1 to Thủ Đức (the new university and tech district) and the An Phú interchange where the Long Thành expressway begins. A practical 3-day pattern: day 1 District 1 colonial walk (Notre-Dame, Post Office, Bookstore Street, Lam Son Square, Opera House) plus the rooftop sundown at the Rex or Caravelle; day 2 Reunification Palace, War Remnants Museum and the Bến Thành Market lunch corridor; day 3 either a Mekong Delta day trip (Mỹ Tho or Cần Thơ) or Củ Chi tunnels half-day plus an afternoon in Chợ Lớn. Saigon is hot year-round (26–34 °C) with a clear two-season pattern — dry season December to April (the comfortable window), wet season May to November with afternoon thunderstorms — and Tết (Lunar New Year, late January or February) is the major closure week.