Highlights
01Dong Xoai bamboo village
Đồng Xoài is the gateway to S'tiêng country — Bình Phước's first people, who raise long houses of bamboo and wood on stilts and read a family's standing in how far the roof runs. Come for the gong music and the rice-pounding rhythm the region is known for, in a corner of the south most travelers drive straight past.
02Cu Chi Tunnels
Seventy kilometres northwest of Saigon lies 250 kilometres of tunnel, dug by hand on three levels — kitchens, field hospitals, and command rooms built below the reach of the bombs. The way in was a trapdoor like this one, cut narrow enough to fold a grown man double and hidden under a scatter of leaves.
03Saigon City Hall
Saigon's old Hôtel de Ville, finished in 1909 — French Beaux-Arts in cream and gold at the head of the Nguyễn Huệ walking street, floodlit like this every night. It's the People's Committee headquarters now, so you take it in from across the square rather than inside; the lights and the traffic trails do the rest.
04Song Vinh Church
A full-scale Gothic cathedral finished in 2022 — twin 55-metre spires and grey carved stone rising straight off Highway 51 on the road down to Vũng Tàu. Eleven years in the building by the local parish, and unmistakably European; most people slow down just to work out what it's doing out here.