36 HOURS The New York Times

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

By Patrick Scott Photographs by Justin Mott 

Aug. 3, 2023

Patrick Scott is a regular contributor to New York Times Travel. He lived in Ho Chi Minh City between 2018 and 2022.

Ho Chi Minh City is synonymous with street food and motorbikes: It often seems like one massive, sizzling food court combined with a beeping motorcycle rally that came to town and never left. Almost as dizzying is how quickly Vietnam’s biggest city is transforming with new urbane enclaves and upscale planned communities, as well as the highrises constantly shooting up, like the country’s tallest skyscraper, Landmark 81, which opened in 2018. The busy boulevard along the Saigon River at Bach Dang Wharf last year added a new pedestrian park and a dramatic suspension bridge across the water to an emerging finance district. What’s constant is the optimism of savvy locals, Vietnamese returning from abroad and ambitious foreigners infusing the city with inventive bars, high-fashion boutiques, chic eateries and hotels.

Recommendations

Key stops

• Ten Thousand Buddha Temple, or Chua Van Phat, is a multi-story pagoda in the Cholon (Chinatown) area with an astounding array of Buddha statues filling multitudes of niches on the top floor.
• Ca Phe Do Phu is a historic cafe in District 1 that was a secret meeting place for Communist special forces plotting against the United States military in the 1960s.
• Nguyen Hue Street, a pedestrian boulevard stretching to the Saigon River, teems with street performers and promenading locals and tourists.

Itinerary

Friday

XO Foodie Tour

5:30 p.m. Rev around town

Embrace the traffic and hop on the back of a motorbike for a whirlwind street food tour with XO Tours, in which the expert, female driver-guides in traditional áo dài tunics navigate through five of the city’s 24 districts. The tours steer clear of the conventional banh mi and pho, instead rolling up for dishes like grilled goat at a hot-pot hub in District 8, and scallops on the half shell in the boisterous seafood street in District 4 (XO Foodie Tour, 1,872,000 Vietnamese dong, or about $79). If you’re even more adventurous, head on your own to District 10’s Ho Thi Ky food street, a long and narrow lane with carts serving dishes like sticky rice cooked in a bamboo branch, and bot chien, fried rice-flour cakes with egg (street-food dishes, 15,000 to 35,000 dong).

Summer Experiment

10 p.m. Try a cocktail in sphere form

Find passionate Vietnamese mixologists in leather aprons using fire, foam and liquid nitrogen at Summer Experiment, the softly lit cocktail bar three stories up in an old apartment building in District 1, the central area with many major tourist attractions, including the nearby Reunification Palace. Try the Heaven Tears, a jiggly sphere that explodes in the mouth with vodka, melon puree and mint (100,000 dong). And ask for one of the homegrown gins like Song Cai, Lady Trieu or Ve de di in the Spiced Plummy Gimlet, blended with a local plum spirit and rimmed with a chili shrimp salt (180,000 dong). If you hear music on the way back down, follow it to COI Saigon (one floor below), which often has free live jazz on weekends until 11 p.m.

A street vendor walks through the Cholon area, the city’s Chinatown, near the multi-story Ten Thousand Buddha Temple.

Saturday

9 a.m. Count the Buddhas

At the end of a lane in the Cholon area, or Chinatown, is one of the city’s most astonishing Buddhist temples: Chua Van Phat, the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple. Climb the stairs to the fourth floor and step awestruck into a gilded, towering chamber lorded over by a 23-foot tall Buddha in a gold robe, serenely seated on a lotus flower. Little Buddha statues sit on each of the sculpture’s 1,000 gold-painted petals, and in the thousands of niches in the walls up to the carved, paneled ceiling. Locals kneel and pray, incense wafts and a robed devotee chants and taps a wooden drum and singing bowl. If you encounter the temple’s head monk, Thich Truyen Cuong, he may answer your questions about the upper chamber’s decade-long construction. Admission free; donations welcome.

11 a.m. See traces of war in a Vietnamese cafe

Have a coffee break steeped in history at Ca Phe Do Phu in the Tan Dinh neighborhood in District 1. During what the Vietnamese call the American War, communist operatives for the north plotted undercover in haunts and homes across Saigon, as the city was then named (many locals still refer to it as such), like this wooden shophouse. Order a coffee with condensed milk (30,000 dong) or a tea with canned peach wedges (40,000 dong) and climb the ladder-like steps to the large room with wartime artifacts like transistor radios and American munitions boxes. Across from an ornamented family altar stands a wooden closet with a drop panel concealing a ladder that led to tunnels. Under a floor plank, you’ll find dangling metal cans that once held cash and documents to be secreted north via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

1 p.m. Hum through a vegetarian lunch

Many Buddhists in Vietnam turn vegetarian each month on the 1st and 15th days of the lunar calendar, but a number of new plant-based restaurants are serving innovative takes on ancestral dishes daily. One standout is Hum Cafe & Restaurant, which opened its three-story, villa-like space with wooden ceilings, lotus flowers and brightly colored drapes, in District 3 in 2012. The thinly sliced and fried lotus root with sesame salt (160,000 dong) are as addictive as potato chips, and don’t miss the winged bean salad with tofu (200,000 dong), the skillet of banana flower in a tomato sauce (190,000 dong), and mango with sticky rice for dessert (80,000 dong).

Tiny Ink

3 p.m. Browse hand-painted dresses

Visitors with an impulse to shop often head straight to Dong Khoi, one of the oldest streets in the city and a hub of fashionable boutiques like Gia Studios, Lam Boutique and Ha Linh Thu House of Silk. But you can also find hidden gems across the city including Tiny Ink, a small boutique at the end of an alley in District 1. A regular on the runway at Vietnam International Fashion Week, the brand is the creation of the designer Hoang Quyen. The boutique displays an explosion of brightly colored gowns and dresses made with silk, satin and organza fabric, and hand painted with floral art and abstract splashes (dresses range from 3.5 million to 24 million dong).

6 p.m. Swap the street-food stool for a tablecloth

When the Michelin Guide debuted in Vietnam in June, Ho Chi Minh City netted just a single star, for Anan Saigon, a restaurant that opened in 2017 and transforms classic dishes into contemporary triumphs, like a bone marrow pho with Wagyu beef. The Michelin guide recommended 55 restaurants in the city, including Nen Light. Opened in 2022 in District 1 and set in an intimate, single room with black ceilings and dark cloths on the eight tables, the restaurant serves creative Vietnamese dishes with seasonal produce. Highlights of a recent nine-course “Journey” menu (about 2.6 million dong, minus alcohol pairing; reservations recommended) included a dollop of minced river eel and roe in a bouquet of sliced plum, and slow-cooked duck from the north with vegetable puree and purple rice.

8:30 p.m. Stroll the center

The city is hardly known for pleasant strolls, given that sidewalks double as motorbike parking lots, and even as ad hoc traffic lanes. But you can find entertaining people-watching on Nguyen Hue Street, a half-mile pedestrian boulevard surrounded by French Colonial landmarks and the Saigon River. Start at the top in the glow of the grand People’s Committee headquarters, then continue through the Le Loi intersection for a view of the palatial Saigon Opera House. Head toward the gleaming towers and the river, wading through the chattering couples and families noshing dried squid or cotton candy, and stopping to join the crowds encircling people crooning ballads or dancing for TikTok videos. Pull up tyke-size plastic stools for a coconut ice cream (15,000 dong) from a cart and watch young locals play da cau, a game that involves kicking a weighted shuttlecock high into the air.

10 p.m. Head to a hipster street

One of the city’s trendiest nightlife enclaves is Pham Viet Chanh Street in the Binh Thanh District, a gritty quarter crammed with eateries and drinking spots in narrow shophouses that has mushroomed from a couple of bars less than a decade ago. If you still have a taste for dessert, try the caramelized fried bread with cinnamon ice cream (100,000 dong) at Captain Phook. Then head across to Nong Trai Khoai, where vintage shop meets dive bar, to try a beer cocktail (70,000 dong) mixed with a brew from Quy Nhon, a coastal city in Central Vietnam, and passion fruit from Dalat, in the mountains. At RetroSaigon you’ll find a multistory warren with a wood-paneled karaoke lounge and a dimly lit rooftop. Drink in the District 2 skyline with a Mangotango, a cocktail with fresh mango, rum and coconut (179,000 dong).

Ho Chi Minh City is a densely developed, often sweltering metropolis, where chaotic wet markets are tucked amid dilapidated apartment blocks and craft drink bars sit in the shadows of gleaming highrises.

Sunday

9:30 a.m. See a harrowing perspective of war

The abandoned and captured United States tanks, planes and helicopters displayed on the grounds of the War Remnants Museum (admission, 40,000 dong) is the first indication that the victors will be telling the story of the wars in Vietnam. The museum is filled with photographs depicting the brutalities that the French and later the Americans committed in their losing campaigns against the Vietnamese. In addition to photos of rows of bodies in open pits, burning villages and instruments of torture, the harrowing displays are heavy on graphic shots of Vietnamese deformed by U.S. chemicals like Agent Orange, with hardly any mention of the atrocities the North and South committed against each other. The museum can trigger a surge of emotions, especially for visiting American veterans, who, 50 years after the United States pulled combat troops out of Vietnam, mostly are in their 70s.

11:30 a.m. Relax in comfort for brunch

The Thao Dien area, across the river from the Binh Thanh District, is home to forests of condo and commercial high rises. Popular with expats and affluent Vietnamese, the area has all the accouterments of the city’s upturn, from chic boutiques to gourmet eateries. For brunch, visit Laang, a stylish, vegetarian-friendly Vietnamese restaurant that may be a welcomed alternative to the multitude of uncomfortably warm, open-air eateries. You can’t go wrong with a platter of wraps and rolls, including succulent grilled chicken and veggies wrapped in fresh leaves (239,000 dong), sweet and savory grilled eggplant stuffed with shiitake mushrooms (109,000 dong) and the refreshing pomelo, lime and butterfly pea juice (79,000 dong).

1:30 p.m. Make room for souvenirs

A short walk from Laang brings you to OHQUAO Concept Store, the brainchild of Simon Phan and Hoa Pham, who created the space for local artists to sell alternative souvenirs to the typical lacquer bowls and conical hats found in tourist markets. Mr. Phan designs cartoonish magnets with quips like “Falling Pho You” (110,000 dong) and illustrated greeting cards (80,000 dong). Their Thao Dien store, which opened in 2022, is filled with products by dozens of local artists, including funky T-shirts (530,000 dong) and hats (430,000 dong) from the Saigon designer Dang Khim’s street fashion brand easybadwork; as well as Ruou Can Y Mienfermented rice alcohol (630,000 dong), Lacaph coffee (from 190,000 dong), both from the Central Highlands; and a wide selection of art prints (150,00 to 300,000 dong).

2:30 p.m. Contemplate contemporary paintings

If you have time for one last stop, see what’s on at the Lotus Gallery in District 7, a fast-developing area of wide boulevards and glossy malls, universities and condo complexes. The long-established private gallery moved into a new warehouse-like space in 2022, just down the road from the Mercedes and Porsche dealerships. Exhibits rotate every couple months and center on Vietnamese themes, like the “Soul of the Street” show (Aug. 5 to 31) that will feature works by 10 artists that include watercolors of fish markets and oil paintings of cyclo pedalers. Admission is free. READ 90 COMMENTS