Saigon Off the Beaten Path: 4 Day Itinerary
Four days adds Landmark 81’s real record-holder view and a one-way ride on the city’s only metro line to the palace, museum, cafe-tower and Cholon days above, still without a rental car or a day trip out of the city. Only have three days? See the 3 day version . Chasing the Cu Chi Tunnels or the Mekong Delta instead? See Ho Chi Minh City as a Vietnam base .
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, and a hidden cafe tower |
| 2 | Notre-Dame’s closed cathedral square and Ben Thanh’s night market |
| 3 | Cholon’s Binh Tay Market, Thien Hau Temple, and a com tam alley |
| 4 | Metro Line 1’s skyline stretch and Landmark 81’s SkyView deck |
Book these before you go
- Compare District 1 hotel rates for a base near the palace and Cholon
- Book a Cholon street-food walk , the easier way through unfamiliar stalls
- Reserve Landmark 81 SkyView tickets for a weekday slot, when the queue is shortest
Day 1: The palace, the museum, and a cafe tower
Morning: Reunification Palace (135 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia, District 1, roughly 40,000 VND, ticket window about 8am-3:30pm) still holds the 1975 tank-through-the-gate history without much dressing up, and the War Remnants Museum (28 Vo Van Tan, District 3, 40,000 VND, 7:30am-5:30pm) is the sobering half of the morning nobody should skip. Check the palace’s current visiting hours and the museum’s ticket session times before you go.
Afternoon: ride the narrow elevator at 42 Nguyen Hue, an aging 1960s apartment block stacked ten floors deep with independent cafes carved out of former living rooms.
Evening: skip Bui Vien’s neon bucket-cocktail strip for a proper ca phe sua da at a small District 1 or 3 coffee shop.
Day 2: Notre-Dame’s square and Ben Thanh after dark
Morning: Notre-Dame Cathedral’s square is worth the walk for the exterior alone. The interior has been closed since 2017 and completion keeps sliding toward roughly 2027. The Central Post Office sits directly across the square, its ironwork popularly but wrongly credited to Gustave Eiffel, when the actual architect was Alfred Foulhoux.
Afternoon: Ben Thanh Market (6am-6pm), then stay past 6pm for the street-food and souvenir night market that runs until roughly 10pm.
Day 3: Cholon, the Chinatown Ben Thanh wishes it still was
Morning: Binh Tay Market in Cho Lon, Vietnam’s largest Chinatown, runs on local wholesale trade rather than tourist markup. Thien Hau Temple next door, a 19th-century Cantonese temple to the sea goddess Mazu, is worth twenty quiet minutes.
Lunch: the com tam alley along Vo Van Tan in District 3, broken rice with grilled pork for 35,000-65,000 VND, sold from early morning until the stalls sell out.
Day 4: The metro’s view and the real tallest tower
Morning: ride Metro Line 1 (Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien) out toward Thu Duc for the elevated stretch’s skyline views, fare 6,000-20,000 VND. Check current fares and hours since it’s the city’s only line and doesn’t reach most sights, so treat it as a one-way novelty ride rather than a transit plan.
Afternoon or evening: Landmark 81 has been Vietnam’s tallest building since 2018, not the older Bitexco Tower, and its SkyView deck runs roughly 300,000-500,000+ VND depending on day and package. Skip the deck entirely for a rooftop bar over the river instead, a similar view for the price of one drink and no queue.
Four days is enough time to see the real skyline twice, once from a train window and once from wherever you decide the view is actually worth paying for. Vietnam’s official tourism site covers visa rules by nationality worth checking before you book flights.