[ ITINERARY · THE DISPATCH ]

5 Days in Vietnam's South: Saigon, the Mekong Delta, and a Motorbike I Regret

Five days in southern Vietnam, told honestly: the chaos of Saigon, the floating markets of the Mekong, and the scooter I rented that I will be apologising for the rest of my life.

Planning the trip? Start with the Ho Chi Minh City itinerary with an interactive map — it lays out exactly where to go, and when.

I’ll start with the regret, because it’s the most useful part. On my first morning of 5 days in southern Vietnam, jet-lagged and overconfident, I rented a 110cc Honda in Saigon “to see the city like a local.” Reader, I saw a roundabout near Ben Thanh Market from approximately seventeen angles, none of them by choice, while four thousand other scooters flowed around me like I was a rock in a river. I survived. My dignity did not. Take the Grab bike. We’ll get to that.

Here’s the trip, the good and the dumb.

Land in Ho Chi Minh City (everyone still calls it Saigon, so will you within a day) and resist doing anything ambitious. The traffic is a sensory event. Just stand at a corner in District 1 and watch ten thousand motorbikes negotiate an intersection with no apparent rules and zero collisions. It’s hypnotic.

Get your bearings with the big-hitters: the War Remnants Museum (about 40,000 VND, sobering, essential, go in the morning), then a wander past the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the gorgeous old Central Post Office. For lunch, find a banh mi cart — Banh Mi Huynh Hoa does the legendary loaded one for around 60,000 VND, and the queue moves fast.

Evening: your first proper street-food sit-down. Plastic stools, low tables, a bowl of com tam (broken rice with grilled pork) or bun thit nuong. Cheap, perfect. Have a Bia Saigon. It’s about 20,000 VND a can.

Today, ignore my opening mistake. Download Grab, order a motorbike taxi (xe om), pop on the helmet they hand you, and let a professional weave you through the city for about 20,000–35,000 VND a trip. You get the thrill of the scooter with none of the responsibility for staying alive. This is the way.

Spend the day in Cho Lon (Chinatown) — the Binh Tay Market, the incense-thick Thien Hau temple. Then a coffee crawl, because Saigon’s coffee scene is a whole thing. Get a ca phe sua da (iced coffee with condensed milk) and, if you’re brave, a ca phe trung (egg coffee) at a hole-in-the-wall. The cafés tucked up rickety stairwells in old apartment blocks on Nguyen Hue are worth hunting for.

In the evening, book a street-food tour by motorbike with a local guide (Back of the Bike Tours and similar run them, around $45). They take you to the spots you’d never find — and somebody else drives, which after Day 1 you’ll appreciate deeply.

Here’s the single best decision I made: I did NOT do a Mekong “day trip” from Saigon. Those buses haul you to one tourist-trap coconut-candy workshop and back, and you see nothing. Instead, take a bus (about 3–4 hours, 150,000 VND with Phuong Trang/Futa) to Can Tho, the delta’s main city, and stay the night.

Arrive, settle in, and spend the afternoon on the Ninh Kieu riverfront. Eat at the night market — grilled river fish, snails, the works. The delta food is sweeter and herbier than Saigon’s and I loved it more.

This is the day you came for, and it only works if you’re brutal about the alarm. Arrange a small private boat the night before (your guesthouse will sort it, about 600,000–800,000 VND for a couple of hours) and leave the dock by 5:30am. The Cai Rang floating market is a working wholesale market — boats piled with pineapples, watermelons, each one flying a sample of its wares on a tall pole so you know what they’re selling from a distance. By 8am the crowds and heat arrive and it’s winding down. Go at dawn or don’t bother.

Buy a coffee passed across from a floating café boat. Buy a pineapple, cut and skewered, from a lady who’s been awake longer than you. This was the best morning of the trip, no contest.

Afternoon: drift the smaller canals, visit a rice-noodle workshop, see a fruit orchard. Then back to Can Tho, or onward bus to Saigon.

Return to Saigon and spend your last day eating everything you didn’t on Day 1. A bowl of pho for breakfast (the southern version, sweeter, loaded with herbs). A proper bun bo Hue if you can find it. A final egg coffee. Buy Vietnamese coffee filters and a bag of beans to take home — best souvenir going, costs almost nothing.

If you’ve got the energy, the Cu Chi Tunnels are a half-day trip out (around 120,000 VND entry plus transport), claustrophobic and fascinating. But honestly, after the motorbike incident, I just wanted to sit on a plastic stool and eat. So I did.

Stay overnight in the delta — the day trip is a waste. Set the dawn alarm for the floating market, it’s non-negotiable. Eat at the plastic-stool places, not the restaurants with English menus and photos. And whatever you do, do not rent a scooter in Saigon on day one to “see it like a local.” Grab exists. Grab is your friend. The the roundabout will haunt me forever and I’m sparing you the same fate.

Five days, one delta sunrise, a hundred bowls of noodles, and exactly one motorbike I’ll be apologising for until I die. Worth it. All of it.

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