Saigon Off the Beaten Path: 6 Day Itinerary
Six days adds Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest pagoda and a genuine slow day to the palace, Cholon, Landmark 81, and Jade Emperor days above, still without a rental car or a day trip out of the city. Only have five days? See the 5 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 |
| 5 | A turtle pond at Jade Emperor Pagoda and a wider food crawl |
| 6 | Giac Lam Pagoda, built in 1744, and a second Cholon night |
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
Day 1: The palace, the museum, and a cafe tower
Morning: Reunification Palace (roughly 40,000 VND, ticket window about 8am-3:30pm) and the War Remnants Museum (28 Vo Van Tan, 40,000 VND, 7:30am-5:30pm) cover the essential, sobering history. Check the palace’s hours and the museum’s ticket sessions before you go. Afternoon: the cafe-apartment elevator at 42 Nguyen Hue. Evening: ca phe sua da over Bui Vien.
Day 2: Notre-Dame’s square and Ben Thanh after dark
Morning: Notre-Dame’s closed-interior square and the Central Post Office across it, its ironwork wrongly credited to Gustave Eiffel rather than Alfred Foulhoux. Afternoon: Ben Thanh Market by day, then its street-food night market after 6pm.
Day 3: Cholon, the Chinatown Ben Thanh wishes it still was
Morning: Binh Tay Market and Thien Hau Temple in Cho Lon. Lunch: the com tam alley on Vo Van Tan, District 3, 35,000-65,000 VND until the stalls sell out.
Day 4: The metro’s view and the real tallest tower
Morning: Metro Line 1’s elevated stretch toward Thu Duc, fare 6,000-20,000 VND; check current fares . Afternoon or evening: Landmark 81, Vietnam’s tallest since 2018, or a rooftop bar for the same view with no queue.
Day 5: A turtle pond and a wider food crawl
Morning: Jade Emperor Pagoda’s turtle pond on an ordinary weekday, then a slow hour at Tao Dan Park. Afternoon and evening: banh xeo and a round of bia hoi, a ritual Hanoi runs harder but Saigon keeps at a smaller, genuine scale.
Day 6: Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest pagoda and a repeat night
Morning: Giac Lam Pagoda in Tan Binh District, built in 1744 and generally considered the oldest pagoda in the city, sits about twenty minutes from the center and draws a fraction of Jade Emperor’s tour traffic despite being the older, more significant site. Afternoon: wander the quieter residential streets of District 3 or Binh Thanh with no fixed stop required, just the version of the city that isn’t built around a ticket booth.
Evening: a second round at whichever cafe tower or rooftop bar earned a repeat visit earlier in the week. By day six, that short list should already exist, and revisiting it beats cramming in one more unfamiliar address.
Six days is enough time to have opinions about which pagoda, which cafe floor, and which rooftop bar actually earned the return trip. Vietnam’s official tourism site covers visa rules by nationality worth checking before you book flights.