Best Things To Do in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam 2024 4K

What's going on everybody this is Silent Hopper TV and today we're going to talk about the best things to do when visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Let's do it! First up on the list is VinPearl Landmark 81 here in Ho Chi Minh City District 1. It is a hotel as well as a shopping mall at the bottom and then it's also a tourist attraction which allows you to go to the very top or almost the very top as you can do here. It is an 81-story building standing at 461 meters or 1513 feet tall. It is the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City and the tickets cost around 220,000 Vietnamese Dong that's around 10 to 12 dollars per person. Children are 150,000 Dong. I did stay at the hotel it is a Marriott property and it was reasonably priced and quite the experience. Next up we're headed to Bui Vien Street. This is the party area in Ho Chi Minh City District 1 for Saigon and just to clear it up Ho Chi Minh City is the official name of this city but people still call it Saigon in many places you will notice which is the name for the city before the war. Also known as Western Street as it pertains to Western culture with many backpackers and locals visiting this area. It is a bit of a wild party street so I wouldn't recommend bringing kids here and if you're looking for a bit more of a tame nightlife experience go check out Nguyen Huu's Walking Street here in the center of District 1. Known for its beautiful architecture from the French colonial era as well as new modern buildings it's got a very bustling atmosphere as you can see at nighttime especially on the weekends and you can expect many street performers while down here. Just be advised that the street performers will expect a tip if you take a picture with them. Also as we continue to show you around Ho Chi Minh City here I'd like to let you know there are time stamps below so you can bounce around from location to location. Also I am going all across Vietnam so I will be putting out videos from Ho Chi Minh City some more as well as Da Nang, Hanoi and several other places. Also you can check out our other channel Island Hopper TV Travel Highlights where I show you the behind the scenes action so I'll put links to that all down below in the comments and in the description below so definitely look out for that. And as you can see this street is quite full of vibrance and life so definitely consider coming down here it's very easy to get to right there in the heart of District 1. Next up we're headed to explore some more history this here is the Ho Chi Minh City Opera House with 1,500 seats here it dates all the way back to 1898 when it was inspired by the French Third Republic so it's quite a historical building here and worth checking out. Now we're actually headed towards the War Remnants Museum this is a great place to go if you want to learn about the history of the Vietnam War between the United States and Vietnam. Outdoors they have a lot of the military equipment from the U.S. Army and the Air Force but then once you go inside you'll also see there's some history about the weapons that were used it was a very unfortunate war as you will discover so it can be a bit heavy to take in. And just some quick history about the Vietnam War it was North Vietnam versus South Vietnam the Americans were occupying Saigon at the time in support of the Southern Vietnamese during the Civil War. The war lasted around 20 years and the Northern Vietnamese ended up winning the war and Saigon fell and became called Ho Chi Minh City. What is this, tiger cages? What happened here? Oh my gosh, is this a prison? Yeah, yeah, guillotine. So this is the guillotine they used, yikes, that is crazy. Tiger cages. On the list, I said this, you know. That area there shows you how they were keeping the prisoners inside those cells and the different techniques they were using to try to get the prisoners to talk. Later on in this video we will be going out to the Cu Chi tunnels where you'll see where the Northern Vietnamese were using that underground tunnel system. For those of you who are history buffs you can read this from Ho Chi Minh, you can pause the video right there. I recommend this museum to people of all ages male and female due to its historical relevance. Wow, what a heavy museum, I mean you walk out of here really feeling a lot of sorrow for the people of Vietnam, what they had to endure during that war. That was a whole eye-opening experience, let's hope that never happens again. Now here we are at the Independence Palace, this here is where Nguyen Van Thieu who was the former president of Vietnam. It was the home and workplace of the former president during from 1967 to 1975. You can do a guided tour with the headset as you're going through here you will learn about many different aspects of how Vietnam was being run at the time. Where they had important meetings and you'll also come across the presidential office and even the war room where military strategists would meet. This is the National Security Council chamber, you can see the maps here this is where the president of Vietnam used to meet with American generals to talk about how they would fight against the North Vietnamese. And one of the most convenient ways to actually get around to all these museums in district one of Saigon is on a motorbike. As you can see I was just taking a motorbike from location to location and you can do most of this just in one day. You can rent your own motorbike or just hire a grab driver to take you around like I did. Yeah so if you're looking for a great massage come to Nguyen Thieu here on downtown area of Ho Chi Minh City. I went with the foot massage combo that includes neck and shoulder. Now here we are at the Jade Emperor Pagoda. This is a Buddhist temple built in 1909. It actually was built in honor of the Taoist god the Jade Emperor or King of Heaven as it's known. It's also a pagoda for people who believe in Confucianism. This is a free activity and now what we're going to do is do some shopping here at the Ben Thanh Market. You can pretty much get anything you could possibly need. What I mean by that is you could arrive in Ho Chi Minh City with nothing but the clothes on your back and you can go to the Ben Thanh Market here and end up getting everything from socks, boxers, shorts, shirts, hats, shoes, everything you could possibly need right here including cologne and it's going to be negotiable when it comes to the pricing. As I was told by my motorcycle driver, never accept the first price. Usually counter offer and then haggle a bit in between. So if they tell you that something is 500,000 dong, you can offer 250,000 dong and then maybe settle somewhere in between 250,000 and 500,000. Sometimes you can even get them down to as low as half off their original asking price and to get them to take that you would just simply start walking away and the next thing you know they say okay okay just a frame of reference about the currency. One US dollar equals 24,500 dong. That's Vietnamese dong. That's the national currency they use here. The items you will see here they are mock copies. These are not authentic real Gucci or Stussy. These are what you would consider to be grade B copies for the most part. They're not even really grade A copies because a grade A copy is just as good as the original so these are not going to be just as good as the original so keep that in mind when negotiating the price. So this is what I got at the market. I checked my card it came out to around a hundred dollars total. So I got a Stussy shirt, Michael Jordan college jersey. This is stitched on, New Era hat, a Louis Vuitton shirt, this Vietnam shirt, another Saigon export beer shirt, Nike shorts, swim trunks and then a Lionel Messi. Look at this Messi jersey. Nice. Now let's talk about some of the local food here in Ho Chi Minh City and of course if you love pho here's one of the best restaurants, Buu Vuong. This is a combo pho with beef meatballs and steak flank. This is a look at what is called crispy pork and the sauce that goes along with it and here we have some delicious baby back ribs in a sauce. These were really tasty and then of course there's plenty of street food. This here is a look at banh mi which is a baguette french style bread, kind of crispy toast and then the filler is usually something like a meat patty or chicken or pork. Very delicious with some veggies. In this case he added a fried egg but yes street food in Vietnam is very popular with tourists so consider doing that but be careful because that's how you can get some bubble guts and to be honest I mostly ate pho at least once a day. They have the chicken pho or the beef pho and I would even order it for room service in my room. Next up we're actually headed to the sky deck here. This is a 360 degree view of Ho Chi Minh City's second largest building. It used to be the largest until they built landmark 81. Tickets to go up here are around $10. This is probably your more convenient sky deck that you will find because landmarks a bit further out of district 1 than this one. Now here we are at Chinatown also known as Cho Lon. Now it is difficult to get here quite a ways out of the city. I would say you're going to expect to drive for 20 minutes outside of district 1 before you get here and it is difficult to find but there is a market that's worth checking out as well but it is considered a very culturally rich area. I will be honest I got lost my first time here. It's mostly a place to do some shopping and also some food is going to be around here. Next up we're actually headed back to district 1. This is the post office a very historical place and it really has become famous because of its architecture. It's a mix between neo-classical European and then some Asian architecture so that's really what has made this place famous. So if you want to see that come here they've got a souvenir shop. If you look right behind me here this is called Book Street. Let's go inside. In a day and age when kindle and other ebooks are popular a book street like this so vibrant and full of many different books is actually a refreshing sight to see so if you love reading you love books definitely come down here to Book Street. Now here we are at Central Park. This is right next to the Vinpearl where the landmark 81 is and it's on the Saigon River but there's many different parks so I would say definitely do some exploring around the city parks. There's also the Tao Dan Park. Now here we are at the Notre Dame Cathedral although while I was here it was under renovation. Hopefully when you arrive it's completed the renovation. Now here we are at the Ben Mi street food market. This place has a wide variety of street food really a one-stop shop for all the food needs that you could possibly want. I stopped here around five o'clock in the afternoon early evening and I ordered two beers hung out and then walked around decided what I wanted to eat because there is quite a bit of variety. It does remind me of a food hawker stalls that you'll find in Singapore so that's what you're going to expect. It was raining when I was here also and the awning and the rooftop actually kept me dry so that's a good thing. It is an outdoor market but they do have shade and protection from the rain. They have pho, they have seafood as you can see a whole variety of shellfish and everything coming out of the South China Sea and the surrounding seas. They also have barbecue. Now here we are going back to the city center of Saigon. This here is the Ho Chi Minh statue government building area. If you want to come here and take a picture this is typically where people get their Ho Chi Minh city picture right next to the government building here and the statue. Vietnam is popular for the self-care salons where you have shaving, straight razor shaving. You also have facial massages for men and women. Also nail salons. So a lot of people come here they get the whole full service that includes the head, neck, shoulders, foot, haircut, everything in between. And for a relaxing massage like this expect to pay anywhere between 400,000 Vietnamese Dong to 700,000-800,000 Vietnamese Dong for one hour and that's just the average rate across the city. After a long day sightseeing a massage like this really comes in crucial. Next up this is the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Garden. It's actually really cheap. It's only around like two dollars to get in here so if you want to go see some animals you can come on over and check this place out. Maybe read some reviews online about it. It's not a very new zoo. It's quite old but I found it interesting for the Botanical Garden. But there are animals around here. You will see hippos, rhinoceros, orangutans, other monkeys. So they've got a lot of active animals here but it's a bit older so don't expect the new enclosure kind of experience. And right next door to the Botanical Garden is the History Museum. You can learn all about the Vietnam, the people. It's kind of like a natural history museum dating all the way back to the early days. So you can learn a lot here. The only thing is they don't have air conditioning in here. It's mostly ceiling fans. It's a very old building but it might be worth it for some of you who want to learn. And the ticket price is very affordable. It's 30,000 Vietnamese Dong which is around a Okay so here we are at the Cu Chi tunnels. This is a tunnel system that goes many different miles around the area of Cu Chi and it was actually established by the communists to advance into Saigon where the Americans were. We're gonna go inside here and explore. They even have a shooting range in here where you can actually sit in a U.S. jeep and shoot M16s and machine guns. Now this is about an hour and a half drive outside of Saigon and I would say if you're into the Vietnam war history you should come out here. And here you'll find all sorts of different booby traps that were used. Also tunnels. Very interesting how they were camouflaging into the actual jungle. The tunnel system was so protected by the camouflage that they were using that you will see bomb holes all around the area where B-52 bombers would fly over and carpet bomb the area trying to destroy the tunnels. And the American soldiers that would be walking through that jungle would oftentimes encounter one of these booby traps and wow that really looks painful. It wasn't just bamboo it eventually became metal. And then they had some other equipment that you could check out like how to make rice wine and rice sheets or rice paper which is used for the spring rolls that you guys eat oftentimes when you're at a Vietnamese restaurant. And even though the Americans had bigger guns and more technology they still found it very difficult to compete against the Vietnamese who knew the land so well and had all of these different jungle tactics called guerrilla warfare. And the locals mostly lived off of this tapioca potato. So now we are here at the mighty Mekong River. We're going on a boat tour. I showed up late in the afternoon because we were coming from the Cu Chi tunnels over to the Mekong and it was about a two-hour drive from the tunnels to here. So I ended up having to get a private boat and that's because they stopped all of the group tours. But it's okay at least with a private boat tour I got to go where I wanted, skip what I wanted, and add something else that I wanted so that was good. But the price was around 1,700,000 Vietnamese dong. And the first stop here was actually the honey bee farm. So you can actually hold these honey bees here. They say they're friendly bees. No, that's banana, ginger, and honey. Oh okay. It's like a banana chip. That's bee pollen. Honey water. Delicious. And then from here we went over to the fruit farm where I got a sample lots of local fruits. And some of the fruit that they gave me was watermelon of course, then dragon fruit, rambutan. They also have roncones and a few different other fruits like banana also available, breadfruit, jackfruit. So if you haven't tried the local fruits this is really a great place to get a taste of the variety. They have two different types of coconut. They have the water coconut and then they have the land coconut. And they put it together into a drink. You drink the coconut water from the land coconut and eat the water coconut. And now here we are doing a canoe along the Mekong Canal. This is actually a natural canal. I thought it was man-made at first but really cool. The jungle definitely overruns this area and you really feel like you're back in time when you're doing this canoe ride here. And they say here the people that live off the Mekong will never go hungry because there's so much abundance in fruits and vegetation and just foraging that takes place here. There's really a lot of different foods that you can find around the Mekong. And of course a wide variety of fish are in this river. And there you do see some crocodiles. Now I asked them if crocodiles are in the Mekong River because I saw people swimming in there and as you can see it is quite brown and murky. But they said no. But sometimes the crocodiles from the crocodile farm get out. I don't know. They say there is some people say there are crocodiles in there and others say there isn't. But then I say well where do the crocodiles live if they don't live here in the Mekong, right? So I wouldn't swim in the Mekong River. And then over on Phoenix Island they actually have the Coconut Temple. And this was a religion that came about but ended up becoming banned because it was so radical they found. So now you just visit here it's kind of like a museum of the old religion from the 70s. And here you have the Coconut Island Resort. You can easily stay here if you wanted right along the banks of the Mekong River. Really a cool place. They also have the Coconut Temple. Hello! These bungalows are around $30 a night. If you wanted to look it up it's called Homestay Cocoa Island. And don't expect nightlife right here on this island right here in the middle of the Mekong River. But it's a cool little retreat to hang out at if you want to get some remote activity along the old temple here at Coconut Island. If you guys enjoyed this one please consider watching some more of our other videos from Vietnam like Da Nang and Hanoi. Click one of these videos next.