Saigon runs on two wheels. The best days out leave the city.
Which Cu Chi trip actually crawls the tunnels and which one parks at the shooting range. What a full day in the Mekong Delta costs. Whether the street-food run is better on the back of a bike. Reviews of every tour you can book in Ho Chi Minh City.
Cu Chi, the Mekong, a street-food run, and the city from the top floor.
The four bookings a first trip to Saigon is built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The tunnelsCu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or AfternoonBen Dinh or Ben Duoc, a morning or an afternoon. Take the morning: by eleven the crawl sections are hot and there is a queue at every hatch.
02The delta dayMekong Delta Tour with Sampan JourneySampan through the coconut canals at My Tho, a bicycle on Ben Tre, back over the bridge by dark. The one long day everybody finds room for.
03Dinner on a bikeHo Chi Minh City Street Food Tour & Sightseeing By MotorbikePillion seat through District 4 and Cholon, stopping wherever the plastic stools are already full. Four hours, five stops, no map.
04The city at onceBitexco Financial Tower: Saigon Sky Deck – Fast Track TicketFast-track to the Bitexco deck for the hour the river turns gold and the traffic below becomes a single stream of headlights.
The best days in Saigon start by leaving it.
Ninety minutes north the ground is hollow. Two hours south it turns to water. Four kinds of day trip, what it costs to join each one, and how much of it you spend on a bus.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Mekong Delta Tour with Sampan Journey
Cu Chi TunnelsHalf a day underground, ninety minutes up Highway 22.
The Mekong DeltaCoconut canals by sampan, and home over the bridge by dark.
Cao Dai and Tay NinhNoon prayers under the all-seeing eye, usually paired with Cu Chi.
Can Gio MangrovesSalt forest and monkey island, the short escape nobody books.
All 39 full-day trips out of the city →
What a day out of Saigon actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. Both of the big days — the tunnels and the delta — sit in the cheapest band.
Cu Chi mornings, the standard delta day, street-food runs, the tower ticket and the water puppets. Most of this city lives here.
The combined Cu Chi-and-Mekong full day, private guides, dinner cruises and the small-group trips that cap at a dozen.
Two and three days deep into the delta, a car and driver for the whole day, and the private runs built around one family.
Saigon eats standing up, on a plastic stool, at eleven at night.
Banh mi from a cart on a District 1 corner, a bowl of hu tieu in Cholon, iced coffee thick enough to hold a spoon. The good tours ride between them. The great ones stop where the stools are already full.
Saigon never cools down. It just turns the lights on.
District 1 at nine is a river of headlights and the food only gets better as it gets later. Ride it on the back of a bike, walk it with somebody who knows which alley, or watch it slide past from a boat on the Saigon River with dinner in front of you.
Cu Chi: two sites, two very different mornings.
Everything at Cu Chi →
Two hundred and fifty kilometres of hand-dug tunnel run under the rubber country north-west of the city. Ben Dinh is the close one and the busy one; Ben Duoc is another half hour out and quieter. The difference between a good morning and a bad one is group size and what time the bus leaves.
Ben Dinh, or the long drive to Ben Duoc
Ben Dinh is ninety minutes out and takes most of the traffic. Ben Duoc is thirty minutes further, has the memorial temple and a fraction of the crowd. Same tunnels, very different noise level.
Small group, or the fifty-seat coach
The cheap seats fill a full-size bus and add a stop at the shooting range. The small-group runs cap around a dozen, spend the time underground instead, and cost a few dollars more.
Cu Chi plus the Cao Dai temple
Tay Ninh is a further two hours north-west, and the day is timed backwards from the noon prayer service at the Great Temple. Long, hot, and the single strangest hour in southern Vietnam.
The tours Ho Chi Minh City is best known for.
Every review on the site →More travellers take these than anything else leaving the city, and the reason is different every time.
1
Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or Afternoon
Review of the $15 Cu Chi Tunnels tour from Ho Chi Minh City, with transport, guide, tunnel access, timings, costs, and practical advice.
From · $15
Read our review →
2
Mekong Delta Tour with Sampan Journey
from $16
3
Ho Chi Minh City Street Food Tour & Sightseeing By Motorbike
from $28
4
Cu Chi Tunnels-Tapioca Small Group Tour Morning or Afternoon
from $14
5
Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta Signature Tour
from $33
6
Mekong Delta Guided Tour from Ho Chi Minh City
from $18
7
Cu Chi Tunnels Morning or Afternoon Tour
from $13
8
Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta Full Day Tour – Max 12
from $43
The delta is two hours south and a different country.
The road runs out at My Tho and the roads become water: coconut canals barely wider than the sampan, brick kilns on the bank, rice paper drying on frames in the sun. Most trips are one long day. The ones that stay overnight get to Can Tho for the floating market at dawn.
Every Mekong day trip →
Ho Chi Minh City rewards anybody willing to cross the road.
The centre is walkable and almost nobody walks it. The old post office and the cathedral sit ten minutes from the War Remnants Museum; Cholon and its herb market are a cyclo ride further. Do it early, before the pavement heat makes the argument for you.
- 1Ho Chi Minh City Street Food Tour & Sightseeing By Motorbikefrom $28
- 2Street Food Tasting & Sightseeing Tour by Motorbikefrom $27
- 3Small-group Saigon City Tour: 4-Hour Must-see Iconic Landmarksfrom $30
Three things that only happen in Saigon.
Every large city has a food tour and a river boat. Hand-dug war tunnels you can still crawl through, a religion that made a saint of Victor Hugo, and rush hour as a spectator sport do not travel.
The Cu Chi Tunnels
Around two hundred and fifty kilometres of tunnel were dug by hand under the fields north-west of the city, on three levels, with kitchens whose smoke was vented a hundred metres from the fire. Two stretches take visitors. Ben Dinh is nearer and busier; Ben Duoc is quieter and keeps the memorial temple. The sections opened for tourists have been widened, and they are still narrower than the photographs suggest.
- 1Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or Afternoon★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 15,833 reviews
- 2Cu Chi Tunnels-Tapioca Small Group Tour Morning or Afternoon★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,485 reviews
- 3Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta Signature Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,328 reviews
The Cao Dai Great Temple
Cao Dai was founded at Tay Ninh in 1926 and takes its saints from everywhere at once — Buddha, Jesus, Laozi and Victor Hugo, whose portrait hangs inside. The Great Temple is painted in the three colours of its three faiths, and four times a day the congregation files in barefoot under an enormous all-seeing eye. The day trips are timed backwards from the noon service.
- 1Cao Dai & Ba Den Mountain + Optional Cu Chi Tunnels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 275 reviews
- 2Small-Group 1-day: Cao Dai Temple & Ba Den Mountain★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 249 reviews
- 3Cu Chi Tunnels – Cao Dai Temple & Black Virgin Mountain Full Day★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 200 reviews
Dinner from the pillion seat
There are more motorbikes registered in this city than there are people in most European capitals, and the only way to eat across it properly is to move at their speed. A rider takes the front, you take the stops: a cart in a District 4 alley, a soup counter in Cholon, a dessert stall that does not open until ten. Nothing about the route works if you try to walk it.
- 1Ho Chi Minh City Street Food Tour & Sightseeing By Motorbike★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 9,413 reviews
- 2Saigon By Night and Street Food By Motorbike | Opt: Ao Dai Riders★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,066 reviews
- 3Private Street Food Tour by Motorbike/Car with Local Students★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,950 reviews
Six ways a day in Ho Chi Minh City goes.
Underground at Cu Chi, downriver into the delta, through Cholon on foot, across the water after dark, on the pillion seat of somebody else's scooter, or standing at a cart with a bowl. Start with the one you already want.
Four Saigon bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over an iced coffee the same morning. These four run on small-group caps, prayer times and market hours that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or AfternoonThe small-group runs cap around a dozen people and go first. What is left the night before is the full-size coach with the shooting-range stop.
- 02Cao Dai & Ba Den Mountain + Optional Cu Chi TunnelsThe Great Temple service starts at noon and the whole day is timed backwards from it. Miss the departure and there is no later one.
- 03Floating Market & Mekong’s Legacy( About 6 Pax)Cai Rang trades at dawn and is packing up by eight, which means either sleeping in Can Tho or leaving Saigon in the dark.
- 04Water Puppet Show TicketOne theatre, a handful of performances a day, and a room that seats a couple of hundred people.
The afternoon rain arrives on schedule. Plan the day around it.
From May the sky opens most afternoons for an hour — hard enough to flood a lane and put every scooter under an awning — then clears as fast as it came. The answer is to be underground, indoors or at a table between two and four. The tunnels are covered, the museums are cold, and a cooking class runs straight through it.
By how much of the day it takes
By what you actually want to do
Three days in Ho Chi Minh City, in the order that works.
Day one
Night twoThe newest Saigon tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Vung Tau/Ho Chi Minh: Nui Dat, Long Tan, Long Phuoc tunnel
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Private Ho Minh City Sightseeing Shore Excursion From Phu My Port
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Private Departure Transfer: Ho Chi Minh City Hotels to Tan Son Nhat Airport
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Vung Tau Full-Day Tour with Beach, Christ Statue & White Palace
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Long Tan, Nui Dat & Vung Tau Highlights – 1 day Private Tour
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Cu Chi Ben Duoc Tunnel & War Museum – Original, Less Touristy
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Ho Chi Minh City Tour with Colonial Heritage and Chinatown
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Free E-Sim War Remnants Museum & Independence Palace Tour
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Private Sunrise Photography Tour – Down in Chinatown
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Ho Chi Minh City Shore Excursion: Private City Tour Including Cyclo Ride
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Skip the Line: Golden Dragon Water Puppet Tickets
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Small-group Street Food Lover by Motorbike (04 hours)
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