Ho Chi Minh 2026: Saigon Through the Plate

Ho Chi Minh travel guide 2026: the best dishes of southern Vietnam, the Cu Chi tunnels, Ben Thanh market and where to eat bún bò Huế before the tourists arrive.

There is a fundamental difference between northern and southern Vietnamese cooking that no travel guide tells you honestly: the south adds coconut sugar. Not much. Just enough to make broths rounder, sauces more complex, and phở carry a sweetness that in Hanoi they would consider heresy. I arrived in Ho Chi Minh thinking I knew what Vietnamese food was — I'd been to three Vietnamese restaurants in Europe — and I realised I knew nothing.

Ben Thanh market is the first test. Arrive before 8am. At that hour, the northern end of the market is still for Vietnamese people: women in office uniforms having a bowl of bún bò Huế before work, older men eating cháo (rice congee) with slices of pork. Bún bò Huế is technically from the central city of Huế, but the version served by the woman at stall 47 of Ben Thanh — pork bone broth, lemongrass, fermented shrimp paste, fresh coriander — is the best I've ever eaten. After 10am, the market has English-language signs and prices go up 40%.

For the Cu Chi Tunnels, don't attempt it by public transport. Book a guided tour. — the difference between entering with a guide who explains the logistical engineering of the resistance and entering alone with the leaflet is the difference between understanding what you're seeing and understanding nothing. I came out of the tunnels — the widened-for-Western-tourists version — and sat on a bench in the shade for 20 minutes without saying anything. That kind of visit.

The War Remnants Museum is mandatory and not easy. Nick Ut's photographs — the child running with napalm on her skin, taken in 1972 forty kilometres from where you were two days earlier at the tunnels — are printed large. The Agent Orange section contains data I had never read. I left needing to eat something and think about something else for a few hours.

The bánh mì: the best one I ate I found on day three, at 7:30am, following a woman in a nurse's uniform leaving Chợ Rẫy Hospital. She stopped at a street cart on the pavement, ordered without looking at the board (unmistakable sign of a regular), and I ordered the same thing by pointing. Freshly baked bread, liver pâté, Vietnamese ham, pickled carrot, coriander, fresh chilli. It cost 25,000 dong — just under a euro.

For the Mekong, consider doing the full day. — the canals, the floating market at Can Tho and lunch of fresh fish in a house on stilts. The difference between going with a local agency in a wooden boat (the correct version) and the tourist bus excursion is enormous.

Stay in District 1, near Dong Khoi street. — you have everything on foot: the museum, the colonial quarter, the best specialty cafés (Vietnam has an extraordinary coffee culture — cà phê trứng, coffee with whipped egg yolk, is from another world) and easy access to other districts by rental motorbike or Grab.

Two practical notes: the eSIM is essential — Grab (the local Uber) runs on data and is the only sensible way to get around without being charged tourist rates on the taximeter. And for Southeast Asia generally, covers up to 90 days and is the most sensible option for anyone travelling more than two weeks in the region.

One last thing about the north-south difference: in Hanoi, phở is eaten in silence, quickly, with little garnish. In Ho Chi Minh, the same soup arrives with an entire plate of fresh herbs — Vietnamese mint, Thai basil, bean sprouts, fresh chilli — and the idea is to keep adding as you eat. It's the same soup and it tastes nothing like the other one.