Travels in Saigon: Park Walks, Spectacular Views, and Lampposts

Jessica and I spent two weeks in Saigon…and that felt longer than it was (not a bad thing, more a shrugged shoulders thing). It is a very busy city, and for people like me, who like walking and museums, Saigon is generally lacking in good walking areas in the city. The sidewalks are packed full of parked motorbikes, if there even are sidewalks at all. Often times we had to walk on the street with bikes and cars zooming by, having to watch out for cracks in the pavement, trash and dog poop. We did walk down by the river, which provided a bit of respite, as I talked about in the first post on Saigon, but wasn’t what we where looking for.

It’s hard to take in the surroundings when worrying about the aforementioned impediments. So, we decided to look for some city parks, and we found some, yay! Further exploration led us to vastly different neighborhoods, some which even had a suburban feel to them. There were still motorbikes, but there were also paved paths, green spaces, and other people walking, exercising, and enjoying the day.

Our first park was the Crescent Lake Park, which was not huge, but provided walking paths, lotus ponds, and other people relaxing during their park time as well.

There is the Crescent Mall nearby (and mall walking is great for some free A/C), and we had planned to take the bridge there. The map showed a bridge, we found the bridge…but once we almost crossed it there were barriers so we could not get to the other side of the lake.

So we backtracked, and wound up taking a taxi; the ride was only about two minutes, and on the way we saw the correct path we should have taken (it was a dirt path through heavy grass, which is why we missed it). After we cooled off at the mall, we did another lap through the park, and after, wandered the neighborhood on the other side of the park. It was quite nice and had a middle walking pathway for a few blocks with some trees, a stream, funky lampposts, and pretty flowers.

It was a peaceful walk and we were surprised at how nice the area was, to be honest, as it was so different from the city we had seen thus far.

The next day, a Sunday, we chose a city park, to see how the locals relax on an off day. Tao Dan Park is one of the largest city parks, and was packed full of people. We first encountered a group of practicing violinists; we waited for a while but they never put on a performance. Boo! We passed a horse statue to celebrate 2026 (the year of the horse), another lotus pond, a mini Cham temple, and a small Buddhist temple with some Bonsai trees.

We also saw lots of groups of kids and teenagers dressed up in different colored, scout-looking, uniforms, doing scout-like things. We walked through the sculpture park, and two mothers with their three girls, all dressed in tan scout outfits, stopped us to ask where we were from, and practice English. The girls were very sweet and cute, and even they agreed it was too hot. After we chatted a bit, we walked on, running into a man feeding squirrels and chipmunks. He also talked to us for a couple minutes, and told us he was a tour guide, and if we were interested in taking a tour, to let him know. He was actually much more professional than some others we had run into, not pushy, and had a nice website and everything. As we hadn’t gotten far the moms brought their girls along to practice more English, and we were happy to oblige. We saw some more of the odd sculptures in the park, and went on our way to find coffee and later, big banh mi for lunch.

The next day we visited the Sala Mall, as we wanted to see a movie (The Odyssey had just come out, and this mall had it in IMAX), but it was sold out, so we went walking in the nearby Sala Urban Park. We happened to be there at lunchtime, and saw many, many office workers, clad in their matching yellow or white shirts and black pants, enjoying lunch in the shade. We liked the park for the wide walking paths, lack of motorbikes, and occasional breeze off the small river.

The Mall itself was a trip, with this huge robot as its mascot, and four levels of shopping and movie theater. On the top level there was an interactive Van Gogh exhibit, that we skipped but did take some photos in front of. We also enjoyed the coffeeshops around the park and even found an Ethiopian restaurant that we later returned to for an authentic, delicious dinner.

After we visited the Fine Arts Museum we took a river-walk along the Saigon River, starting at the Rainbow Bridge Park and continuing past the Thu Ngu Flagpole. It was nice to take a break and look out upon the river (and see some cool lampposts).

Still in District 1, we continued on, walking through Bach Dang Quay Park, where kids were playing on the playground and older folks were working out using the provided outdoor workout equipment, with joggers passing intermittently. Amongst all the skyscrapers, we walked past the famous Hotel Majestic, and the Tran Hung Dao statue, who was a legendary 13th century general.

We eventually found ourselves at the Golden River Park, which is, mainly, for the residents of the Chinese-style, Vinhomes Apartment Buildings, which you can see some of in the picture below (left hand side). I say Chinese style as we saw many of these identical, tall, apartment buildings in China, usually 6-12 buildings in a cluster. We saw more of these clusters in Saigon. We also had a great view of the Ba Son Bridge, and the tallest building in Saigon, Landmark 81, behind it.

We visited Landmark 81 on our last full day in Saigon, and had (very expensive) coffees at the oddly named, Blank Lounge. Getting to the lounge takes a bit of doing; first we had to navigate a small mall, and took the wrong elevator; a nice English-speaking man told us which was the correct one. We took that to the Marriott hotel, and then there is another elevator that took us to the Sky Lounge. There is a one drink minimum to sit and enjoy the views, and it was worth it.

Across the street and over a cool bridge was Central Park, brought to us by Vinhomes. As you saw above, Vinhomes is quite the presence in Vietnam. They own Landmark 81, many apartment buildings, and are the largest commercial developer and second largest corporation in Vietnam. It is a very nice park, with a Japanese Garden, walking paths, statues, flowers, playgrounds, and lots of green space.

We really enjoyed it, and even were caught in a downpour! Every day we were in Saigon had thunderstorms and rain the forecast, but when it rains, its usually not for more than a half hour, and is typically in the early afternoon or late in the evening. When we were at the park we had to take shelter in one of the many gazebos scattered throughout the area. We were trapped with a friendly Vietnamese woman who lived nearby, and we talked about Saigon and Malaysia, which is the next country we visit on our Southeast Asian tour. It was a nice way to wait out the downpour, which only lasted about 20 minutes, and then we were on our way again.

The last major area we visited to get our daily walking in was the most bizarre and grandest, the planned community named Van Phuc City. We left the normal city like where we were staying, and down this wide street, full of businesses on the first floor and apartments above, similar to many new city developments in the US.

We had the taxi take us to the riverfront, where we passed this set of homes that were huge, and all looked the same. The waterfront river-walk was all nice with shiny tile, manicured grass and trees, and newly painted benches…but the place was basically deserted; there were a dozen or so young people making a video, a couple on a bench, and us. It was so nice yet so empty and we were confused.

We did a river walk by ourselves, and continued to be shocked that there were no other people here, enjoying this walk and view. It’s not like the river smelled, or it was unsafe, it was, just deserted.

We found a single nearby coffee shop on the map, so we headed toward that, along a tributary of the river. On our way, we passed an interestingly named restaurant, called “Euro Night” but only saw workers. There was nothing else around it, literally, huge empty fields (maybe the sites of future developments?), blocks away from other housing, like the mansions we saw earlier.

Just past the above staircase to nowhere, we saw more huge homes, which all looked the same. When we came closer they looked empty, and with one exception, they all were.

We finally reached the coffee shop, the aptly named Sugartown, with a playground in front. They had a bunch of pastries and good coffee, at least a half dozen employees, and maybe a dozen people inside, enjoying their coffees, like this wasn’t an oasis in a ghost town. We ordered ice coffees and a couple pastries to share, and they were really good. We still asked ourselves, why is this here? Who comes here? as Sugartown and “Euro Nights” were the only eateries for at least two miles.

We figured that this area is going to be filled with the wealthy of Saigon over time, but one thing stood out to us as to why it may not be filling up fast. Every 30 minutes or so we would hear airplanes preparing to land; this area was right in the landing flight path. The airport was still a few miles away, on the other side of the river, but we could see how, if one paid millions of dollars for one of these mansions, they wouldn’t want to hear planes preparing to land above them every 30 minutes. Still, it was a great place for us to walk, and we returned another day to take the river walk again. Maybe in 10 years this area will be a bustling area for the Saigon elite, but it was not when we visited.

That wraps up our time in Saigon; we spent two weeks in the city, and, upon review, that was a bit too long. It is not really walkable, unless one gets out of the city proper, and there are not a ton of museums or great temples with which to occupy one’s time. If one was flying through, maybe a couple nights would be appropriate to see the city, and that was the sentiment we even received from locals. The chef who ran and cooked the breakfast every morning asked us after our first week, “when are you leaving?” and asked that every day of our remaining week. We didn’t think he did it because he wanted to be rid of us (but we couldn’t be 100% sure); Jessica attributed it to his amazement that any tourists would stay in Saigon for so long (and his limited English didn’t permit us to tell him we were slow traveling).

Lastly, the lampposts were really great all over the city. To end, I will share as many as I could photograph. Next stop on our Vietnam tour is the mountain town of Da Lat!