41 Best Sights in Vietnam

Honoring Vietnam's national dress, this private museum is set on stunningly picturesque grounds that are a very long way from downtown. Once you pay the admission fee, a guide will take you to the two beautiful wooden exhibition houses, which showcase ao dais from the 17th century to the modern day. Smaller kids will like feeding the fish and playing ao dai quoits (and generally letting off steam on the verdant lawns if they're all city-ed out). This place is—amazingly—still off the tourist radar.

Be sure to go inside to check out the huge map of old Indochina in this classic French-colonial building, designed by French architect Alfred Foulhoux (and not Gustave Eiffel as some sources claim) and completed in 1891. In addition to the usual mail services, there are phones, fax machines, and a small gift shop.

The outside of this museum showcasing the history of traditional Vietnamese medicine might be plain, but inside it's a fabulous carved wooden wonderland, with the interior of an authentic antique house on the third floor and a re-created Cham-style gazebo on the rooftop. Displays, enhanced by audiovisuals and drawing on nearly 3,000 items in the collection, range from Stone Age pots to 3rd-century coins (for coin-rubbing therapy), ancient texts, bronze kettles, and a range of cutting, chopping, and storing utensils. The concluding part of the introductory film (subtitled in English) and the shop at the exit are a reminder that this is a private museum, set up by Fito Pharma. It's well worth a visit for the insight into traditional Vietnamese daily life through the ages.

This is one of the more potent symbols of the Vietnam War. On April 30, 1975, a North Vietnamese Army tank smashed through the main gate of what was then known as the Independence Palace, ending one of the bloodiest conflicts in living memory. The current boxy building replaced the elegant French colonial–style Norodom Palace, which was bombed by fighter jets in 1962 in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. The jet, along with the tanks that ended the war, is on display on the grounds. Free guides are available inside the palace, which remains as it was on that fateful day in 1975, albeit slightly more worn. The time-capsule nature of the palace offers a fascinating insight into the high life of 1960s Saigon, when bigwigs would enjoy tea and movie screenings in plush rooms upstairs, while the war effort was directed from the spartan concrete warren in the basement. The gardens cover 44 acres of lush lawn and shady trees, and a large fountain in front of the palace redirects the bad luck that could flow into the palace from the broad boulevard of Le Duan Street, according to the principles of feng shui.

This huge park, a block behind the Reunification Palace, has a little something for everyone: walking paths for strolling or jogging; tall trees for shade; open areas where exercise classes are held in the mornings and evenings; a miniature Cham tower; a replica Hung King Temple; and an extensive children's playground. There's also a coffee stand, known as the bird café, at the Cach Mang Thang Tam entrance, and every morning bird fanciers bring their feathered friends here for singing practice. Do pull up a plastic chair and enjoy the ruckus and the theater of finicky owners trying to position their birds in order to generate the loudest birdsong. The birds are usually taken home by 9 am—by motorbike, which is a spectacle in itself. Leading up to Tet, the lunar new year, a spring festival is held in the park, with live entertainment and food and handicrafts stalls.

A large government-owned tourist park, Van Thanh is a lovely escape from Ho Chi Minh City's urban chaos, with its artificial lake, restaurants, swimming pool, and small children's playground. The food isn't brilliant but dining in a little hut over the lake is fun, and the grounds and buildings are picturesque "ancient Vietnam" style. Entry to the pool, which gets very crowded on weekends, is 70,000d.

This bustling market, which is more than a century old, has a bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, and if you are unlucky enough to encounter pushy vendors, scammers, and pickpockets it won't exactly be an enjoyable experience. Stay alert, though, and you can have a lovely time exploring the 3,000 stalls. The most interesting section is the wet market at the back. Cheap T-shirts and other tourist goods are for sale in the front section, fabric and haberdasheries in the middle, and some great food stalls spring up beside the market at night.

This wholesale market, in a colonial-era Chinese-style building about a half-hour drive from downtown, is not so much a shopping destination (unless you want to buy spices, herbal medicine, or textiles) as a spectacle to behold, particularly if you get here before 8 am to savor the frenetic atmosphere at its peak. With more than 2,000 stalls, Binh Tay can get pretty chaotic. In the central courtyard a small shrine honors the market's founder, Quach Dam (1863–1927), a disabled Chinese immigrant who started out collecting scrap before making his fortune. The food court inside serves a wide variety of Vietnamese street food and Chinese-influenced dishes—great for a replenishing brunch after an early arrival.

A symbol of contemporary Ho Chi Minh City, the 68-floor Bitexco Financial Tower is the city's second tallest building, and you can enjoy high-altitude views from the Saigon Skydeck on the 49th floor. This deck features interactive screens that provide information about a selection of streets and sights below.

Opened on Christmas Eve 1959, the Caravelle is one of the city's most iconic hotels, accommodating many foreign correspondents during the Vietnam War, with journalists chronicling the 1968 Tet Offensive from the hotel's rooftop bar. Extensive renovations in 2019 updated some of the rooms and event spaces while the 9th floor Saigon Saigon Bar still draws a crowd for its live music and city views.

Built in 1932 by Tamil Muslims, the Cholon Mosque now serves the city's Indonesian and Malaysian Muslim community. Notice how much simpler the mosque is than the pagodas in the area, which are characterized by exuberant ornamentation and bright colors.

Next door to Dam Sen Water Park, this attraction has an amusement park as well as its cultural aspects, which makes it a good choice for a family outing. You can enjoy traditional Vietnamese handicrafts, games, and folk song performances and then view a range of cultural reproductions, which include an ancient Roman square and a Japanese teahouse and peach blossom garden. If the kids get restless, head for the roller coaster, bumper cars, Ferris wheel, and other rides. Tamer activities include swan boats to pedal, an extensive aquarium, animal enclosures, a bowling alley, and a movie theater. There are food and drink outlets throughout the park.

Trying to visit both the cultural and the water park in one day is not recommended.

For a rollicking day out for kids of all ages, this park has a variety of slides and pools (one with a wave machine), a zipline, and a lazy river ride. Compared to water parks in more developed countries, Dam Sen is a little rough around the edges, but that doesn't prevent it from being an exhilarating day out. Children have to be taller than 4 feet 6 inches to go on the larger slides, but there's a range of medium slides for smaller kids and a toddler play area.

On weekdays there are usually no lines for the rides.

Lockers are available (15,000d) and you're given a small waterproof tube to hold your money, valuables, and the locker key. There are also several food kiosks within the park. It can take up to an hour to get here from District 1 when traffic is heavy, or about 40 minutes in light traffic.

One of the oldest pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City, Giac Lam Pagoda was built in 1744 in the jungle outside of the city of Gia Dinh. Outside the walls of the pagoda now lies the urban sprawl of Ho Chi Minh City. Inside, however, are peaceful gardens containing a bodhi tree imported from Sri Lanka in 1953, a seven-story stupa, and the pagoda itself. Prayers are held every evening at 6 pm.

Like many other pagodas built by Fujian congregations, this one is dedicated to Thien Hau, goddess of the sea and protector of fisherfolk and sailors. It has four stone pillars encircled by painted dragons, brought from China when the pagoda was constructed in the 19th century. Also note the scenes in ceramic relief on the roof and the murals next to the main altar.

Spread over three floors in a reportedly haunted French-colonial villa known as Chu Hoa's mansion, the city's Fine Arts Museum offers a comprehensive run through the main stages of Vietnamese art. Strolling around is a pleasant experience as the building itself is architecturally beautiful. While there could be more information to enlighten visitors, the examples of wartime propaganda art and lacquer art are superb.

Completed in 1890, the building has been the residence for the French governor of Cochin China, the Japanese governor during Vietnam's brief Japanese occupation, and the envoy of Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam, and also served as the Supreme Court. Since 1975, it's been a museum (formerly known as the Museum of the Revolution) with a strong focus on the Vietnamese struggle against the French and Americans. Displays focus on famous marches, military battles, and anti-French and anti-American activists. Exhibits include photos of historical events, uprisings, student demonstrations, and the self-immolation of the monk Thich Quang Duc as a protest against the war. The building itself is as interesting as many of the exhibits inside: a neoclassic design, it has huge columns outside and 19th-century ballrooms with lofty ceilings inside. Beneath the building are concrete bunkers and tunnels connecting to the Reunification Palace. It was here that President Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–63) and his notorious brother Ngo Dinh Nhu hid before being caught and eventually executed in 1963. Outside on the grounds are Soviet tanks, an American helicopter, and antiaircraft guns.

Built by the French between 1901 and 1908 to be Saigon's Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), this elaborate yellow-and-white colonial building now houses the city's main governing body. The building is not open to the public, so you can't get a peek at its ornate interior, but it remains one of the most photogenic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City, especially at night when it's floodlit.

This example of early French-colonial architecture in Vietnam, nicknamed the Dragon House (Nha Rong), could be considered more interesting than most of the displays within. Sitting quayside on Ben Nghe Channel, at far end of Ham Nghi, it was constructed in 1863 as the original French customshouse; any individuals coming to colonial Saigon would have had to pass through the building once they docked at the port. Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), who was known as Nguyen Sinh Cung as a child, Nguyen Tat Thanh as a schoolboy, and later Nguyen Ai Quoc as well as other aliases, passed through here in 1911 on the way to his 30-year sojourn around Europe and America. Inside are some of his personal belongings, including his journals, fragments of his clothing, and his rubber sandals. Uncle Ho, as he's now affectionately known, was an ascetic type of guy, known for wearing sandals made only from tires; these are now scattered in museums around the country.

In French-colonial days, the Hotel Continental's open-air terrace—then known as Café de la Hien—was the town's most sought-after lunch spot; during the Vietnam War, journalists and diplomats met there to discuss the latest events. Now, the terrace has been enclosed and renamed La Dolce Vita Café. The hotel features in Graham Greene's The Quiet American and the author himself was a long-time resident in room 214 and a regular at Le Bourgeois Restaurant.

Built in the late 19th century, the Majestic was one of the first French-colonial hotels, and it still has the elegant style to show for it. Head to the rooftop bar for an excellent view of the Saigon River.

The Cantonese community built this structure—the finest Chinese pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City—in 1909. A mixture of Taoist, Buddhist, and ethnic myths provides the sources for the small pagoda's multitude of statues and carvings, incorporating just about everything from the King of Hell to a Buddha of the Future. Slowly strolling around the interior to view them may be preferable to attempting to decipher the significance of each of the numerous, distinct deities. Take a moment to note the main altar, the side panel's depiction of hell, and, in the side room, the miniature female figures representing the range of human qualities. There are usually a few vendors at the entrance selling turtles. Buddhists believe that releasing these turtles into the pagoda's turtle pond will generate merit.

In 1983, city authorities created this park by clearing the Cimetière Européen, which had been established in 1859 by the French navy as the final resting place for soldiers and sailors who died in the city. Some superstitious locals won't go to the park because of its previous incarnation and the ghost stories that have been circulating ever since the cemetery was decommissioned. Ghosts aside, with its large shady trees, this is a great spot for people-watching early in the morning, with games of badminton, ballroom dancing, aerobics, jogging, and stretching going on. The park, which occasionally hosts book and agricultural fairs, is also a popular spot for Vietnamese couples to steal some privacy after dark.

Vivid statues and colorful floral offerings at this Hindu temple create a microcosm of India in the streets of Saigon. Before the temple was returned to the Hindu community in the early 1990s, the government used it as a factory for making joss sticks (incense) and for processing dried fish. Today it serves a small congregation of Tamil Hindus, but some Vietnamese and Chinese locals also revere it as a holy space.

This colonial-style theater was built by the French in 1899 as Saigon's opera house. Later it housed the National Assembly of South Vietnam, the congress of the South Vietnamese government. After 1975, when South Vietnam ceased to be, it became a theater again.

This fascinatingly eclectic museum is in a beautiful colonial building inside the grounds of Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens, with various galleries dedicated to different eras. Much of Vietnam's history, and consequently its identity today, has been influenced by outsiders. In ancient times the Khmer and Chinese empires occupied large portions of modern-day Vietnam, and in more recent times the country has been partially or completely occupied by French, Japanese, and American forces. The museum gives a Vietnamese perspective on these events.

This pagoda, built by the Chaozhou Chinese congregation in 1872, is worth seeing for its elaborate woodwork. There are intricately carved wooden boats and a large figure of the deified Chinese general Quan Cong's sacred red horse, as well as representations of Quan Cong himself with two guardians. A festival dedicated to Quan Cong takes place here every year on the 13th day of the first lunar month.

During the daytime Nguyen Hue Walking Street, with its dearth of shade trees, is not very impressive, especially when it's not hosting an exhibition or event. But come evening, it's a charming microcosm of modern Saigon: wandering vendors, canoodling couples, and selfies galore. Ho Chi Minh City's first pedestrian street, which stretches from the People’s Committee Building to Bach Dang Wharf, was a canal in colonial times, and the streets to either side were called Rue Rigault de Genouilly and Rue Charner. Tip: be careful when crossing the road to get to the walking section as the locals still aren't used to the traffic lights.