Vietnam's Information
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National reunification ushered in a far less catchy moniker, and more than nine million people now live in this effervescent city, making it more populous than Hanoi. Compared to the more romantic, mellow national capital, Ho Chi Minh City comes across as a hyper-commercial flurry of sights and sounds and functions as the crucible in which Vietnam's rallying fortunes are boiling. All the accouterments of economic success are here - fine restaurants, flashy hotels, glitzy bars and clubs, and shops selling imported luxury goods - adding a glossy veneer to the city's hotchpotch landscape of French colonial architecture, venerable pagodas, and austere, Soviet-style housing blocks.
Ho Chi Minh City's de facto city center is Ben Nghe, a busy area with prime specimens of colonial-era architecture. Bisecting the zone is changing, with entire blocks being razed and towering monoliths transforming its image further still, the street has some character in the form of chic boutiques with eye-catching window displays and cute cafes to pause between shopping and sightseeing.
Referred to by most backpackers as a "backpacker area", the atmospheric jumble of streets around Pham Ngu Lao does indeed contain the overwhelming majority of the city's budget accommodation options. There are pricier places here too, and the same goes for the area's many places to eat - everything from trendy restaurants serving foreign nosh to streetside shacks whipping up exactly what you see in and on their various tubs and shelves. If you've been to Bangkok's Khaosan Road, you may remark on a certain similarity - it's most evident during the evening when Bui Vien finds itself crammed with locals and not-so-locals drinking cheap beer on tiny chairs. Further north, the park fronting Pham Ngu Lao is a pleasant place by day, and a bit of a pick-up spot by night, particularly for elements of the city's gay community.
Bustling Ben Thanh Ward is most famous for its eponymous market. Many visitors end up staying in this teeming area since it's within walking distance of a fair number of the city's best sights. One of Ho Chi Minh City's most popular and important sights is the Reunification Palace, set in a patch of parkland just to the west of the city center, and within walking distance. The area has enough to keep you occupied for at least half a day: poke east and you will find yourself at the hulking redbrick Notre Dame Cathedral, head northwest and you will soon hit the War Remnants Museum, while a walk west will take you through Cong Vien Van Hoa Park toward Xa Loi Pagoda.
North of Notre Dame Cathedral, Le Dian Boulevard runs between the Botanical Gardens and the grounds of the Reunification Palace. Known as Norodom Boulevard to the French, who lined it with tamarind trees to imitate a Gallic thoroughfare, it soon became a residential and diplomatic enclave with a crop of fine pastel-hued colonial villas to boot. Its present name doffs a cap to Le Duan, the secretary-general of the Lap Dong, or Workers' Party, from 1959 until he died in 1986. Turn northeast from the top of Dong Khoi and the sense of harmony created by Le Duan's graceful colonial piles ends abruptly with several brand-new edifices. There's ample sightseeing potential here, however: the Jade Emperor Pagoda and Le Van Duyet Temple are under-visited, if anything, while closer to the center, the city's Botanical Gardens, soo, and History Museum all sit in the same swathe of land.
The dense cluster of streets comprising the Chinese ghetto of Cho Lon was once distinct from Saigon, though it now blends seamlessly into present-day Ho Chi Minh City as Districts Five and Six, and is linked to the center by the five-kilometre-long umbilical cord of Tran Hung Dao. The distinction was already somewhat blurred by 1950, when Norman Lewis found the city's Chinatown "sollen si enormously as to become its grotesque Siamese twin", and the steady influx of refugees into the city during the war years saw to it that the two districts eventually became joined by a swathe of urban development. A short stroll around Cho Lon (Big Market) will make clear that, even by this city's standards, the mercantile mania here is breathtaking; most visitors make a bee-line for the historic Binh Tay Market, though larger ones are catering to more pressing local needs such as home furnishings, farming equipment and so on.
Many of the city's expats and nouveau richer live out in District Two, shielded from the hubbub of the city center by the River Saigon. Much of the land within the curve of the river remains empty, but that doesn't mean nobody owns it - everything that's not already built up is primed for development. Perhaps one day it will come to resemble the ultra-modern area surrounding the Landmark 81 tower, Vietnam's tallest building, which stands out like a sore thumb in Binh Thanh, a suitably affluent district on the way to District Two from the city center.
