SAIGON · VIETNAM
Street food, scooters, and the delta beyond.
Vietnam’s loudest, hungriest city and the country that fans out from it. Night food tours on the back of a bike, the Cu Chi tunnels, river cruises and the floating markets of the Mekong Delta.
Pure Saigon
What Saigon does that nowhere else can.
Street food, museums and boat trips exist in every city. Eating dinner off the back of a moving motorbike, crawling a wartime tunnel network, and watching a market trade boat to boat do not.
After dark, on two wheels
Street Food From the Back of a Bike
Nine million motorbikes move through Saigon every day, and the best way to eat is to join them. A guide picks you up, you climb on the back, and you weave through the night to stalls down alleys you would never find alone — banh xeo here, snails there, a plastic stool and a cold beer to finish. No other city does street food at this speed.
- 1 Saigon By Night and Street Food By Motorbike | Opt: Ao Dai Riders
- 2 Private Street Food Tour by Motorbike/Car with Local Students
- 3 Saigon: Street Food Tasting & Sightseeing Tour by Motorbike
An hour northwest
Down Into the Cu Chi Tunnels
The Viet Cong dug 250 kilometres of tunnels into the hard red earth outside Saigon — kitchens, hospitals and meeting rooms, all underground. You can drop into a widened section and crawl it yourself, then walk the trapdoors and craters above. Nowhere brings the war this close to the surface.
- 1 HCM City: Cu Chi Tunnels Morning or Afternoon Tour
- 2 Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or Afternoon
- 3 HCM: Cu Chi Tunnels & Mekong Delta with Coconut Village Tour
Where the river takes over
Out to the Mekong Delta
Two hours south the highway gives way to water, and the Mekong splits into a green maze of coconut canals and rice. You trade the van for a sampan, glide under the palms to fruit orchards and coconut-candy workshops, and reach a floating market where the trading is still done boat to boat. The slow, wet counterweight to the city.
- 1 From HCM City: Mekong Delta Tour with Sampan Journey
- 2 HCM: Cu Chi Tunnels & Mekong Delta with Coconut Village Tour
- 3 Mekong Delta Guided Tour from Ho Chi Minh City
The one everyone books
Saigon's single most popular day out.
More travellers book this than any other trip in the city. If you only lock in one thing before you land, make it this one.
The classics
Saigon's Most Popular Tours & Day Trips
The Cu Chi tunnels, the Mekong Delta, street-food crawls and scooter nights. The days most first-timers book before anything else.
Where to begin
The trips a Saigon visit is built around.
The tunnels, the delta, the street food and the scooter nights. The handful of experiences most Saigon trips are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
Which day trip out of the city?
Saigon's three big days out pull in different directions: war history northwest, river life south, a technicolour temple further out. Here is how they differ, and who each one suits.
Eat like a local
Where the locals actually eat.
The best food in Saigon is never in a restaurant. It is a banh mi cart on a corner, a pho counter that has run since the war, a com tam grill smoking on the pavement, a row of plastic stools down an alley you would walk straight past. A good guide knows which ones, and orders the dishes you cannot read off the wall. Come hungry and wear stretchy trousers.
Read the guide: Saigon street food tours →Two hours south
Sampans, orchards and floating markets.
The Mekong is where Vietnam grows its rice and most of its fruit, and the easiest way in is by boat. Swap the van for a wooden sampan and slip down narrow coconut canals to a riverside orchard, a coconut-candy workshop and a honey farm. Start early enough and you reach a floating market, where whole families sell from boats stacked with pineapples and pomelos. Slow, green and a world away from the horns.
See the Mekong Delta trips →The city
Nine million motorbikes, and somehow it flows.
Saigon runs on two wheels. The traffic moves like a river, families and fridges and flower stalls all balanced on a single seat, and crossing the road is a leap of faith you learn to take. Ride pillion through it on a back-of-the-bike tour, or walk the old French quarter from the cathedral to the Reunification Palace. Loud, fast and completely alive.
Browse Saigon city tours →The American War
The war is never far from the surface.
Saigon was the southern capital, and the war the Vietnamese call the American War still shapes the city. The War Remnants Museum lays it out without flinching, the tanks still sit in the grounds of the Reunification Palace where they crashed the gates in 1975, and out at Cu Chi you climb into the tunnels the fighting was run from. A good guide turns the dates and acronyms into something you actually feel.
- 1 CuChi Tunnel Tour: The Legendary Underground Network
- 2 Adventure Cu Chi Tunnels: Vietnam War Underground Network AM/PM
- 3 Cu Chi Tunnels Half-Day Tour: Vietnam War Underground Network
After dark
Saigon's second shift starts at sunset.
The city only gets better once the heat drops. Night markets fire up their grills, rooftop bars look down on the lit-up skyline, dinner boats push out onto the Saigon River, and the street-food scooters set off into the dark. A different city from the one you walked at noon, and the one you came to see.
See all 24 evening experiences →Out of the city
Six ways out of Saigon.
Cu Chi for the tunnels. The Mekong for the river and the orchards. Cai Be for the floating market. Tay Ninh for the Cao Dai temple, Can Gio for the mangroves, and Mui Ne for the red dunes and the coast.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Street food if you came to eat. A scooter if you want the city at speed. A cooking class if you want to take it home. Plus walking tours, river cruises, the markets, and cycling out through the rice paddies.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Saigon.
First time in town? A long weekend that pairs the city with the two day trips everyone makes.
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