Walking Routes in Ho Chi Minh City
Motorbikes rule Ho Chi Minh City’s streets, but three neighborhoods reward walking anyway if you pick the right hours and don’t try to connect them on foot.
French-colonial District 1
Begin at the Saigon Central Post Office, its ironwork designed by Alfred Foulhoux, not Gustave Eiffel, then cross to Notre-Dame Cathedral’s exterior; the interior stays closed to visitors through a 2027 restoration target regardless of how much scaffolding has come down outside. Walk Dong Khoi Street past the Saigon Opera House and the Hotel Continental, where Graham Greene wrote parts of The Quiet American, finishing at Nguyen Hue Walking Street, City Hall, and the Ho Chi Minh statue. Every stop here is free to view from the outside.
Cho Lon’s temples and guild halls
District 5’s Cho Lon rewards a full morning. Start at Binh Tay Market on Thap Muoi, walk east along Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street past herbal apothecaries that have not changed layout in decades, then reach Chua Ba Thien Hau, a Cantonese temple from around 1760 with coiled incense hanging over the courtyard. Nghia An Hoi Quan, a Teochew assembly hall with gilded woodcarving, and Hao Si Phuong, a century-old residential courtyard alley, round out the walk; people live in the alley, so keep cameras low and voices down.
District 1 and Cho Lon sit more than 5 km apart along unshaded, exhaust-heavy roads. Don’t attempt to walk between them: take a Grab or Xanh SM to Cho Lon first, then explore on foot once you arrive.
Guided versions of both routes on GetYourGuide cover the same ground with a local narrator, and Viator’s walking tour listings are worth comparing if a self-guided map isn’t your preference.
A wartime walk in District 3
A quieter route connects the War Remnants Museum on Vo Van Tan to the Secret Weapons Bunker at 287/70 Nguyen Dinh Chieu, a townhouse that hid over two tons of weapons for the Saigon Commandos between 1966 and 1968 under a trapdoor still open today. The route between them passes shaded, French-villa-lined Ba Huyen Thanh Quan Street. Both stops deal in real wartime loss, so an unhurried pace suits this walk better than the photo-op energy of Nguyen Hue.
Crossing the street
Saigon’s intersections rarely stop traffic for pedestrians outright. Step off the curb at a steady pace, make eye contact with oncoming riders, and keep moving forward rather than freezing or sprinting; motorbikes read a predictable trajectory and part around it.
For a hands-on stop between walks, see the activities guide , which covers cooking and coffee workshops in the same District 1 area as the colonial route. The city’s official tourism site lists current event closures that can affect any of these three routes.
Do the District 1 walk at sunrise, save Cho Lon for a taxi-assisted late morning, and treat the District 3 wartime walk as its own unhurried half-day rather than a stop tacked onto either of the others.