Where to stay in Ho Chi Minh City: the 5 neighborhoods to know in 2026

This is the Saigon the French drew: Dong Khoi street runs down from the cathedral and the Central Post Office to the river, the Opera House closes Lam Son square, and in the evening City Hall lights up the pedestrian esplanade of Nguyen Hue, where families walk their children until eleven. The grand hotels have been here for a century, the shopping malls for ten years, and the Bitexco tower watches it all from its helipad. You walk everywhere, but every avenue is crossed at a slow pace, hand raised, through the flow of scooters. The downside: this is the most expensive district in the city, and the streets empty after midnight.

Ben Thanh market opens at six and closes at six, then the food stalls take back the pavement outside. On the other side of 23 September Park, Pham Ngu Lao and Bui Vien have been the backpackers' quarter for thirty years: hostels, bus agencies for the Delta and Mui Ne, massages, and a street that goes pedestrian at weekends, where the bars turn up the sound until two. Ben Thanh station is the terminus of line 1, and the airport bus stops at the park. The downside: Bui Vien does not sleep, and neither do the rooms that face it; one street further, you hear nothing.

We did our last souvenir shopping at the huge Ben Thanh Market, where you will have no shortage of options.

T TravelVince

North-west of the centre, District 3 keeps the villas and tree-lined streets of the French era: cafés in courtyards, ochre houses, and the War Remnants Museum, which takes a morning and leaves you silent. The Reunification Palace and its park are on the edge, the Xa Loi and Vinh Nghiem pagodas further into the streets. To the east, Da Kao slopes down towards the canal: the Jade Emperor Pagoda, its turtles and its smoke, then the botanical garden and the History Museum. The hotels are cheaper than in District 1, ten minutes' walk from the cathedral. The downside: no metro, and the evening is spent in District 1, by taxi or on foot along the avenues.

This visit didn't leave us indifferent, and it seems essential when visiting southern Vietnam.

T TravelVince

Cholon, "the big market", is the Chinese city that Saigon absorbed: the Thien Hau pagoda and its hanging spirals of incense, the Cha Tam church, the Binh Tay market where wholesalers load scooters with sacks of rice and racks of dried fish, and streets of traditional pharmacies that smell of roots. On the edge of District 10, the Ho Thi Ky flower market works at night and the food street next door in the evening. You sleep here for the morning soups and the pagodas empty at seven. The downside: six kilometres from District 1, by bus or taxi, and almost no restaurant open past ten at night.

Across the Saigon River, Thao Dien is the village where the foreigners live: villas behind walls, cafés with gardens, bakeries, international schools, and quays where the river flows wide and brown. Opposite, in Binh Thanh, Landmark 81 rises 461 metres above a new park, with an observation deck at the top. Metro line 1, opened at the end of 2024, stops at Thao Dien and at Van Thanh park and puts the centre a quarter of an hour away, which has changed everything for those who want to sleep somewhere green. The downside: no pagoda or museum on foot, and a neighbourhood life made for its residents more than for a three-day stay.