A greener, more residential district just west of the centre — tree-lined streets, pagodas, local markets, some of the best street food and coffee, and a wave of boutique stays. Quieter and more authentic than District 1, still an easy hop from the sights; the base for travellers who want neighbourhood life, cafés and good eating over tourist bustle.
A look around
What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.
€45–100
typical per night in Vietnam
The sensible middle
Typical prices for Ho Chi Minh City — neither steal nor splurge.
Where it sits
The circle is District 3 and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.
How far is everything?
From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.
- Reunification Palace18 min walk1.5 km
- Notre-Dame Cathedral21 min walk1.8 km
- Saigon Central Post Office22 min walk1.9 km
- Saigon street food23 min walk1.9 km
- Ben Thanh Market24 min walk2.0 km
- Nguyen Hue walking street7 min taxi2.5 km
- A rooftop bar over the city8 min taxi2.6 km
- Thien Hau Temple12 min taxi4.0 km
On your doorstep
What you’re living next to if you stay here.
- 1.War Remnants Museum — A harrowing, essential and unflinching account of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese side — powerful photojournalism, the effects of Agent Orange, and captured tanks and aircraft in the courtyard. Deeply moving and not for the faint-hearted, it's the single most important thing to understand the city and country; sobering, but you'll leave changed. Allow a couple of quiet hours.
- 7.Vietnamese coffee culture — Saigon runs on coffee, and it's an experience — thick, dark cà phê sữa đá dripping over ice and condensed milk, the frothy egg coffee, or a coconut-coffee smoothie, sipped on a tiny stool watching the motorbikes roar past. From decades-old hole-in-the-wall cafés to hip roasters in hidden apartment blocks, the café scene is the soul of the city. Pull up a stool and linger.
- 10.Jade Emperor Pagoda — A wonderfully atmospheric 1909 Taoist temple, smoky and dim, crowded with fantastical carved wooden statues of gods and grimacing deities, a tortoise pond and clouds of incense — one of the most extraordinary pagodas in the city (Barack Obama visited on his trip). Small, free and mesmerising; a serene, otherworldly pause amid the roaring traffic of District 1's fringes.
When are you staying?
Booking.com & Airbnb open searched to District 3; flights via Google Flights.