Travel and Tourism in Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City, still universally known by its former name of Saigon, is the largest and most economically dynamic city in Vietnam, a metropolis of more than nine million people in the city proper with several million more in the surrounding urban area. It is a city of extraordinary energy, its streets filled at all hours with a density of motorcycle traffic that takes the breath away on first encounter, its markets, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and nightclubs operating around the clock, its skyline changing with the construction of new towers with visible speed. It is also a city of profound historical depth, where the evidence of the American War coexists with a present of such vitality that it seems almost incompatible with that history.

The War Remnants Museum, in the heart of District 3, is the single most confronting and emotionally powerful war museum in the world. Originally named the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes when it opened in 1975, it has been renamed and its presentation has moderated somewhat over the decades, but it remains an experience of overwhelming moral weight. The museum's outdoor courtyard displays American military hardware including aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and artillery pieces. But it is the indoor exhibits that leave the most permanent impression: the extensive documentation of the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnamese civilians and combatants, with photographs of the birth defects and cancers that have affected subsequent generations; the photographs by American and international photojournalists documenting the human cost of the war, including some of the most famous and disturbing war photographs ever taken; and the Requiem exhibition, containing the work of photographers from both sides of the war, many of whom died while documenting it. It is an experience that no visitor to Vietnam should omit, and no honest account of the country can avoid.

The Reunification Palace, formerly the Independence Palace and before that the Norodom Palace of French Indochina, is the site where the Vietnam War effectively ended on April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese tanks T-54 number 843 and Type 59 number 390 crashed through its iron gates at 11:30 in the morning, and a North Vietnamese soldier ran to the roof to plant the flag of the National Liberation Front. The building has been preserved essentially as it was on the day of liberation, with the original furniture, fittings, and decor of the late 1960s intact throughout. The contrast between the mid-century modernist aesthetics of the South Vietnamese government's official residence and the historical cataclysm that ended its existence creates a peculiarly powerful visitor experience. The bunker beneath the building, with its communications equipment, maps, and war room tables, adds a dimension of operational history that complements the symbolic resonance of the upper floors.

The Cu Chi Tunnels, located approximately 40 kilometers northwest of the city center, are perhaps the single most astonishing monument to Vietnamese military ingenuity and human endurance anywhere in the country. The tunnel network beneath Cu Chi district was begun by the Viet Minh during the French colonial period and expanded enormously during the American War to create a complex of approximately 250 kilometers of underground passages, chambers, hospitals, kitchens, schools, armories, and command centers in which thousands of Viet Cong fighters and local civilians lived and operated for years. The tunnels were dug by hand in the laterite clay of the Cu Chi district, which proved well suited to tunnel construction, and were ventilated by cleverly disguised surface vents, equipped with booby traps at multiple levels, and connected to the surface by openings so small that the average American soldier could not fit through them. At the height of the war, American forces based at the Cu Chi military base were unaware that beneath their feet lay this enormous underground city from which attacks were launched against them. The experience of crawling through a widened section of the original tunnels, even for a short distance, conveys in a way that no photograph can the extraordinary courage and determination of the people who lived in them for years.

The Notre-Dame Cathedral of Saigon, completed in 1880 with bricks imported from Marseille, stands in the center of the city's colonial administrative district and is one of the most striking examples of French Romanesque architecture in Southeast Asia. The adjacent Central Post Office, designed by Gustave Eiffel and completed in 1891, is a cathedral of commerce rather than religion, its vast iron and glass interior, painted with old maps of Cochinchina, one of the most beautiful interiors of the colonial period in Asia. Ben Thanh Market, at the center of the city, remains the most famous market in southern Vietnam, its arched entrance an emblem of the city and its interior a dense labyrinth of stalls selling everything from fresh produce to handicrafts and tourist souvenirs.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, in Quang Binh province in central Vietnam, has been recognized by the scientific community as containing the largest and most spectacular cave system in the world. The park was first inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003 for its extraordinary geological values, with the inscription extended in 2015 to recognize its biodiversity values as well. The karst geology of the Phong Nha region is among the oldest in Asia, formed over approximately 400 million years, and the cave systems cut through it by underground rivers have produced passages and chambers of dimensions that are without parallel anywhere on Earth.

Son Doong, meaning Mountain River Cave, is the world's largest known cave by volume, a fact confirmed by a British caving team led by Howard Limbert of the British Cave Research Association, which made the first complete exploration of the cave in 2009 following its discovery by a local farmer, Ho Khanh, in 1991. The cave's main passage is approximately five kilometers long, up to 200 meters tall, and up to 150 meters wide, with a volume of roughly 38.5 million cubic meters, making it approximately four times the size of the previous record holder. Within Son Doong's main passage, two large dolines, or ceiling collapses, allow sunlight to penetrate from above, creating conditions for the growth of genuine jungle ecosystems inside the cave, with trees growing to heights of 30 meters in the beams of natural light. An underground river runs through part of the cave, and the moisture it generates, combined with the temperature differentials at the dolines, creates weather systems inside the cave, with clouds forming and genuine rain falling within the cave environment. The sense of being in a world entirely separate from the world above, a world with its own sky, its own jungle, its own river, and its own clouds, is an experience unlike anything else accessible to human exploration.

Access to Son Doong is strictly controlled by the Vietnamese government and managed by the single tour operator Oxalis Adventure Tours, which limits the number of visitors to approximately 1,000 per year to protect the cave's extraordinary ecosystem. The four-day expedition, which requires jungle trekking, overnight camping inside the cave, and crossing the underground river, is one of the most sought-after adventure travel experiences in the world, and places on expeditions sell out months in advance at a price of around $3,000 USD per person.

For visitors who cannot access Son Doong, the park offers several other cave systems of remarkable quality. Paradise Cave, known in Vietnamese as Thien Duong Cave, is approximately 31 kilometers long and regarded by cavers as one of the most beautiful cave systems in the world, its dry upper passages lined with stalactites and stalagmites of extraordinary variety and elegance. Phong Nha Cave itself, navigable by boat along an underground river into a series of dramatically lit chambers, offers a different character of cave experience, with the river passage creating a sense of discovery and the water reflecting the cave formations above. Dark Cave offers the most adventurous accessible experience, with kayaking on the river to reach the cave entrance, followed by a zip line into the cave, swimming through a section of the underground river, and emerging covered in white mineral mud.

Festivals and Cultural Life

Vietnamese cultural life is organized around a rich calendar of festivals that reflects the country's Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist, and folk religious traditions. The most important festival of the Vietnamese year is Tet Nguyen Dan, the Lunar New Year, which falls in late January or early February and marks the beginning of a new year in the lunar calendar. Tet is the most important family celebration in Vietnam, when families reunite, ancestral altars are decorated with fresh flowers and food offerings, firecrackers and fireworks are set off at midnight, and the streets of cities and towns fill with people dressed in their finest clothes. The week before Tet sees a frenzy of shopping, cleaning, and preparation, with markets overflowing with the fresh flowers, kumquat trees, peach blossoms, and special foods associated with the holiday. Traveling in Vietnam during Tet itself is challenging, as transportation becomes extremely busy and many businesses close, but the atmosphere in the days surrounding Tet is one of the most festive and beautiful in Asian travel.

The Hung Kings Festival, held on the tenth day of the third lunar month at the Hung Temple in Phu Tho province, is the most important national ceremonial occasion in Vietnam, honoring the legendary founding kings of the Vietnamese nation. It was inscribed in 2012 on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage requiring urgent safeguarding. The Mid-Autumn Festival, known as Tet Trung Thu, held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, is one of the most charming and family-oriented festivals in the Vietnamese calendar, celebrated with lantern processions, mooncake making and eating, and performances of the traditional lion dance. Children carry elaborately made star-shaped lanterns through the streets in the evening in a display that is both festively joyful and visually beautiful.

Traditional Vietnamese music includes several distinct forms of regional classical music, including Ca Tru in the north, a chamber music tradition of considerable antiquity and complexity featuring the distinctive dan day lute, phach percussion, and a highly ornamented vocal style, inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009. Nha Nhac, Vietnamese Court Music of the Nguyen Dynasty, performed with a large ensemble of traditional instruments in the context of imperial ceremonies, was one of the first Vietnamese cultural traditions inscribed on UNESCO's list, in 2003. The communal singing tradition of Quan Ho from Bac Ninh province, in which pairs of singers from different villages engage in antiphonal love songs following strict traditional rules of poetry, melody, and improvisation, was inscribed in 2009 and remains a living tradition performed at spring festivals throughout the north.

The ao dai, the Vietnamese national dress, is a garment of extraordinary elegance, a fitted silk or satin tunic worn over wide trousers, its form-following silhouette and high collar creating an aesthetic that is both modest and deeply graceful. It is worn by Vietnamese women on formal occasions, at school in many institutions where it remains the required uniform, at weddings and festivals, and increasingly as a fashion statement by young urban Vietnamese who have revived its wearing as an expression of cultural pride. Hoi An is the finest place in Vietnam to have a custom ao dai made, with experienced tailors capable of producing a perfectly fitted garment in a single day.

The UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Vietnam has nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a remarkable concentration for a country of its size that reflects the extraordinary density of its historical and natural assets. Ha Long Bay was inscribed in 1994 for its geological values and recognized again in 2000 for its aesthetic values. The Complex of Hue Monuments was inscribed in 1993 as one of Southeast Asia's finest expressions of imperial civilization. Hoi An Ancient Town was inscribed in 1999 as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port. My Son Sanctuary was inscribed in 1999 as the most important expression of Cham Hindu civilization in mainland Southeast Asia.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park was inscribed in 2003 with the boundary extended in 2015, recognized for both its extraordinary cave systems and its exceptional biodiversity. The Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long in Hanoi was inscribed in 2010 for its evidence of more than 1,300 years of continuous use as the center of political power in Vietnam, with archaeological layers spanning the Dinh, Le, Ly, Tran, Mac, and Nguyen dynasties. The Citadel of the Ho Dynasty in Thanh Hoa province, built in 1397 of massive cut stone blocks using quarrying and construction techniques of remarkable sophistication, was inscribed in 2011. The Trang An Landscape Complex in Ninh Binh province, the country's most recently inscribed site, was added in 2014 as a mixed natural and cultural property.

The Yen Tu-Vinh Nghiem-Con Son, Kiep Bac Complex of Monuments and Landscapes (2025) is a serial transboundary property inscribed jointly with Laos, encompassing a complex of Buddhist pilgrimage sites in northeastern Vietnam associated with the Tran dynasty of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The complex includes Yen Tu Mountain, regarded as the cradle of Vietnamese Zen Buddhism and the seat of the Truc Lam school founded by Emperor Tran Nhan Tong following his abdication, Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in Bac Giang province (one of the most important Buddhist monasteries in Vietnamese history and home to the oldest surviving Vietnamese woodblock printing archive), and the Con Son-Kiep Bac sites in Hai Duong province, where the great general Tran Hung Dao is venerated at the Kiep Bac Temple and the reformist Buddhist monk Nguyen Trai spent years in retreat at Con Son Pagoda. Together these sites trace the flowering of a distinctly Vietnamese Buddhist tradition and the intersection of spiritual, literary, and military history that defines the Tran dynasty era.

Together these nine sites span Vietnamese civilization from its pre-dynastic Bronze Age foundations through the full arc of dynastic history to the extraordinary geology of its karst landscapes. Visiting all eight in a single journey would be an ambitious undertaking requiring at minimum two to three weeks, but even visiting two or three of them provides a sense of the exceptional wealth of Vietnam's cultural and natural heritage.