Ho Chi Minh City doesn’t politely welcome you. It grabs you by the shoulders, gives you a brisk shake, and pushes you straight into traffic.

We arrived just before Lunar New Year (Tet) — prime time for noise, neon, and national enthusiasm — and booked seven nights. We spent them chasing temples, dodging scooters, and eating more pork bánh mì than is medically advisable for a couple in their mid-fifties.

Halfway through, we were meant to book our next stop but Tet had filled every hotel. We looked at alternatives and then simply decided to stay in Saigon a couple of extra nights.

It was hot. Sticky. Loud. Slightly overwhelming.

And completely unforgettable and apologies in advance for the amount of text and photos but we just loved Saigon.

Ben Thanh Market: First Impressions in Ho Chi Minh City

Our first stop was Ben Thanh Market, the one in every guidebook, complete with clock tower and promises of “authentic bustle.”

It was… fine.

If you enjoy being gently trampled while examining polyester handbags in seventeen identical variations, this is your spiritual home. Stallholders called out with professional optimism. We did one lap, briefly considered a second, and decided life was too short.

The building itself has a certain faded grandeur — like a retired opera singer who still insists on wearing sequins to buy milk.

Nearby, a bakery attempted to pass off stale bread as fresh. This was a strategic miscalculation.

What followed was a polite but immovable “no, thank you.”

After forty years together, I read Craig’s expressions fluently. It also said, quite clearly, and you can shove your bánh mì where the sun doesn’t shine.

The bakery was immediately boycotted. 

A smaller bánh mì stall down the road became our daily breakfast pilgrimage. Loyalty, once lost, is rarely regained.

Unfortunately, we had to walk past the original bakery every day. They received steady eye contact.

Silent protest: perfected over four decades.

China town market certainly had the food and whole section nailed but it wasn’t a patch on Thailand Chinatown

The Best Bánh Mì in Saigon (And Other Street Food Observations)

Our culinary highlight was a tiny street stall serving pork bánh mì. Simple. Cheap. So good we returned daily without pretending to consider alternatives.

It became our edible anchor in a city running at full throttle.

We tried a family-run café one evening. The food was perfectly respectable. The cockroaches weaving between our feet added unpredictability and occasional squeals.

Nearby eateries filled with expats offered quiet reassurance. If people who live here eat here, survival seems likely.

Walking Ho Chi Minh City: A City of Eleven Million

We walked everywhere.

Walking in Ho Chi Minh City feels faintly rebellious, but it rewards you. Someone hoses down a pavement with theatrical commitment. Someone trims herbs beside streaming traffic. Narrow apartment blocks — improbably thin and stacked high — hide calm courtyards behind metal gates.

We rarely arrived anywhere on time. Every few minutes, something demanded inspection.

Colonial Architecture in Saigon (Under Scaffolding)

The French did not build quietly. The Saigon Central Post Office remains gloriously intact — vaulted ceilings, patterned tiles, old maps lining the walls. We bought postcards and wrote them properly, as though it were 1997.

Across the square, Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon and the Saigon Opera House were wrapped in scaffolding. Craig prefers his architecture unobstructed.

Book Street offered shade and a man playing music on rice bowls. I bought a book because atmosphere demands participation.

At night, the People’s Committee Building glows gold and unapologetic.

We drifted through the old-world calm of the Hotel Continental Saigon and admired the rooftop swagger of the Rex Hotel Saigon.

For once, we committed to the Instagram photo. I posed — slightly stiff — and immediately noticed my grey roots staging open rebellion.

The next day, I entered the city newly “pink rinsed,” as Craig calls it. Slightly darker than planned. Fringe slightly shorter. Lego head. I look faintly startled — but operational.

Then there’s Independence Palace — retro government chic in full 1970s confidence. Wide corridors, preserved war rooms, décor that committed and never reconsidered.

At 40,000 dong to enter — roughly the price of a sandwich — it was unexpectedly excellent.

Pagodas and Temples in Ho Chi Minh City’s Chinatown

By the time we reached Chinatown, we’d already paused for coffee and shade several times.

Belief systems layer here without negotiation.

Vinh Nghiem Pagoda felt airy and expansive.

In Cholon, Nghia An Hoi Quan Pagoda and Thien Hau Temple were darker, thick with spirals of incense. Terrapins blinked lazily in temple ponds, entirely unbothered by theology.

Then Mariamman Hindu Temple rose in technicolour confidence between shopfronts.

Uniformity is not Ho Chi Minh City’s ambition.

Layers are.

The Café Apartments on Nguyen Hue Walking Street

Overlooking Nguyen Hue stands The Café Apartments, a former residential block now stacked with cafés and boutiques.

From the outside: chaotic.

Inside: charming.

We wandered through a glorious, slightly bonkers vertical maze where every balcony hides a café and every doorway smells like roasted beans and sweetened condensed milk. It’s less a building and more a caffeinated ecosystem, the sort of place where you half expect to find a barista living under the stairs like a highly caffeinated house elf.

I loved it. Absolutely adored it. I drifted from café to cà phê like an overexcited squirrel, poking my head into tiny rooms filled with neon signs, plants that looked like they had their own Instagram accounts, and baristas who took their craft so seriously you felt guilty ordering anything with ice.

From the balconies, Saigon buzzed below — scooters weaving, horns honking, the whole city doing its usual impression of a live-action video game. But up in the apartments, everything felt calm and breezy, like the building had decided to give us a little pocket of peace.

And while I was floating around in caffeinated bliss, Craig… well. Let’s just say this place was certainly not Craig’s cup of coffee. Too many choices, too many stairs, too many people  and coffee that didn’t come in a normal mug with a normal name. He gamely followed me from floor to floor, but I could see he wasn’t enjoying the experience quite like me.

Still, even he had to admit the place was something different — quirky, charming, and unlike anywhere else we’ve wandered into.

Superb. Utterly superb. Even if one of us was secretly dreaming of a home cup of coffee.

Saigon Cruise for 86p – return 

We hopped on a Saigon River “cruise” and by cruise, I mean an 86p-per-person plastic‑chair special yellow speed boat. 

But honestly? Cracking way to see the city. From the water, Saigon looks calmer, cooler, almost elegant… if you squint past the floating debris and ignore the fact the boat engine sounds like it’s powered by angry bees.

Top tip though: earplugs. Essential kit. Not for the engine — for the Chinese tour group who brought enough enthusiasm to power the national grid. Lovely people, but my left ear is still vibrating.

Nguyen Hue Walking Street at Night

Nguyen Hue Walking Street is not subtle. At night is basically Saigon’s answer to a human zoo — neon lights, hoverboards, karaoke, fried squid on sticks, and about 10,000 people all convinced they’re the main character. Free entertainment, questionable singing but everyone can just dance in the street. Love it.

Bands compete. Fire arcs into humid air. Music arrives and settles in your ribcage.

In a narrow bar wedged between competing speakers, we found relative quiet and conversation — a couple from Newcastle escaping winter, two men from Montenegro drinking whiskey decisively, a father and son in an extended holiday spending quality time together. 

Poodles paraded past, impeccably trimmed. Some dyed. All confident.

A bottle of water cost more than a bottle of beer.

Hydration, clearly, is negotiable.

Nail Bars and services 

Saigon’s nail bars are less beauty service, more tactical ambush. We’d sit with a beer, watching the ladies hover like hawks, then swoop in with laminated “nail services” menus. If you so much as blinked with interest, out came the mobile phone offering extra services. Cue either delighted grins or the kind of shock that makes you spill your drink. It was classic people‑watching — theatre, comedy, and chaos all rolled into one manicure pitch.

Life in a Local Hem in Saigon

We stayed down a hem — one of the narrow residential lanes branching off the main road.

Our hotel was the only boutique spot. The rest were homes: laundry, grandparents, plastic stools.

For Tet, residents decorated the alley with flags and lanterns. It felt improbably calm — as though someone had pressed mute on the city outside.

One neighbour had transformed his gate with red banners and lights. He invited us in to explain the symbolism with enormous pride. We understood perhaps half and nodded with confidence.

Further down lived a young family with a baby boy — maybe six months old. Each day we said hello. Each day he studied us carefully. By the end of the week, we earned a cautious half-smile.

Street vendors gathered at the hem entrance each morning. A loyal dog guarded their patch of pavement, alongside three tumbling puppies who treated gravity as optional.

It was a small world inside a city of eleven million.

Scooters in Ho Chi Minh City: Crossing the Road

No one walks unless necessary.

Scooters handle commuting, shopping, furniture transport, and occasionally what appears to be an extended family of six.

Crossing the road is not a pedestrian activity. It’s a coordinated act of trust. Step forward steadily. Do not hesitate.

We tested this theory more confidently after Valentine’s Day drinks.

A City That Doesn’t Ask Permission

Ho Chi Minh City does not request your approval.

Skyscrapers loom over shanty towns. Pagodas sit between repair shops. Incense curls through traffic fumes without waiting for clearance.

One moment you’re standing in a lantern-lit hem. The next you’re threading through moving scooters, pretending this was always the plan.

After nine nights — two more than planned — we left slightly deaf, faintly sunburnt, very well fed, and faintly Lego-haired.

The city never lowered its volume.

But in our little hem, someone watered plants, a baby learned our faces, and puppies ignored gravity.

Chaos on the outside.

Tenderness down the lane.

And that balance is what stayed with us. We don’t like Saigon, we love it.

How many melons?

Bitexco Financial Tower Skydeck

On our last night we made our way up the Sky Tower — £6.50 to shoot 49 floors above Saigon, roughly 600 feet up and absolutely worth every penny. We arrived just in time for sunset, watching the whole city glow gold before the darkness slowly slid in and switched Saigon to full sparkle mode. The views were breathtaking, the timing was perfect, and honestly, what a way to say goodbye to a city that’s been superb in every sense. Ending on a high… literally.