My Top 5 Markets In Saigon, Flea & Street Markets In Ho Chi Minh City

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Saigon’s markets seem lớn exist in another dimension khổng lồ the rest of the city. In downtown District 1 you’d be forgiven for thinking that the traditional Vietnamese wet market no longer exists; replaced by generic high-end shopping malls. But, with the exception of Bến Thành Market (which caters largely to foreign tourists these days), local markets outside the city centre continue lớn thrive. Still as bustling, vibrant & fascinating as ever, these markets play a major role in most ‘ordinary’ people’s daily lives. Saigon’s markets are highly organized, the produce is local & fresh, & the sheer volume và variety of things for sale is remarkable. Once you’re in the embrace of one of Saigon’s markets you leave the modern façade of District 1 far behind, & enter a more colourful, friendly, và personal world. Beloware my đứng đầu 5 markets in Saigon.

Thriving, bustling, vibrant: Saigon’s local wet markets

TOP 5 MARKETS IN SAIGON

My favourite local markets in Ho chi Minh City

To best appreciate Saigon’s markets, visit during the mornings; the earlier the better. At this time of day, the produce is at its freshest và most colourful, và the markets are at their busiest. Nothing can beat the morning rush & the glory of fresh produce at the beginning of a new day.From 10am, the best has been bought và the customers long gone: herbs start khổng lồ wilt in the heat, fish start to die in their shallow water và fruit loses its shine. These markets represent a much poorer side of Saigon, yet here you’ll find some of the friendliest, liveliest, most convivial people in the city. Come with a sense of adventure, & expect products (and aromas) both wonderful và weird. The following markets are in no particular order of preference: they’re all fantastic.

Click on a market from the danh mục below khổng lồ read my review, or click HERE to lớn watch my video:

MAP:My top 5 Markets in Saigon:

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1. Xã Chiếu Market:

Address:Lê Văn Linh Street, District 4: <MAP>

Like so many of Saigon’s markets, from the outside làng mạc Chiếu is an eyesore: a horrible concrete egg carton of a building; grey, grim and bleak. But such is the buzz of people & produce around the perimeter of the market square, you quickly forget about the shortcomings of its façade. All along the outer edge of the market square there are food stalls selling delicious street food dishes, & opposite them, under the concrete slabs of the market exterior, are fruit & vegetable stalls, all bursting with colour in the early sunlight. Through the narrow market entrance there’s a tight outer circle of stalls specializing is all sorts of dried goods, kitchen equipment & bottled sauces. At the heart of the market, in a cathedralic space filled with shafts of sunlight, the meat and fish take centre stage. Behind the stalls there’s a cooked food corner where customers – many of whom are market workers – dine on various Vietnamese delicacies from noodle soups to sweet bean desserts.

You can’t help but notice that it’s mostly women over the age of 30 who populate markets lượt thích this in Saigon. Both the buyers and the sellers are female. There’s a distinctly chatty atmosphere; lively but not frantic. Many of the market workers have worked in the same spot for years so they know each other well. There’s lots of gossip & laughter – especially at the sight of a người nước ngoại (a foreigner) – but no one hassles you to buy from them as they vì in Bến Thành Market. You’re miễn phí to walk among the produce, soaking up the colours & smells in the cool air and hushed atmosphere: there’s something very church-like about it.

2. Bình Tây Market:

Address:57 Tháp Mười Street, District 6: <MAP>

An exception lớn the rule when it comes khổng lồ market facades, Bình Tây’s exterior is a beautiful và exotic mix of French architecture in the Chinese style: a big, yellow ochre, station-esque building with tiled roof, and colourful, floral, be-dragoned motifs on the porticoes and entrances. It’s an enourmous square structure built around a courtyard full of greenery with a shrine to the market’s founder, engulfed in incense smoke, at its centre.

The section immediately after the entrance is dedicated lớn clothes, bags, fabrics, and scarves, which although colourful is rather boring compared khổng lồ the food sections. Around the perimeter of the courtyard you’ll find all sorts of great-looking traditional Vietnamese and Chinese candied fruits & nuts in glittering packets, & not a Cadbury or Nestle hình ảnh in sight. There are big heavy-duty bags of other dry goods here, such as biscuits, grains, beans và spices. Follow the mouth-watering aromas all the way lớn the back of the market và this will lead you to a superb canteen where you could spend weeks ‘food-hopping’ from one stall to the next. The food coming out of this canteen is extraordinary, và this alone is reason enough to visit Bình Tây Market.

There’s an incense and votive offering section beside the canteen where candles, paper money and printed prayers are bought lớn be burned as offerings to the ancestors. Right in front of this is a great butchers section with raw and roasted meats hanging on hooks, then there are herbs, pickled vegetables, dried mushrooms and medicinal leaves, until you hit the fruit và vegetable stalls that line the perimeter of the market building. Just like Xóm Chiếu there’s a strange hush inside this shady market – totally at odds with the rush và noise in the narrow streets surrounding it. Perhaps this is due to the sheer scale of these two markets: even the constant bustle of buying and selling can’t fill their massive spaces.

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3. Bình Điền Market:

Address:off Nguyễn Văn Linh Street, District 8: <MAP>

Every great seafood-eating city has a great seafood market: Tokyo has Tsukiji Market, new york has Fulton Market, và Saigon has Bình Điền Market. Located on the outskirts of the city, Bình Điền is gigantic. Boats và trucks arrive in the small hours of morning to lớn unload their produce, fresh from the rivers of the Mekong Delta, the East Sea, and the Gulf of Thailand. Before even the first glimmer of dawn, Bình Điền’s three enormous aircraft-sized hangers are filled with fish, shells, crustaceans, and reptiles, not lớn mention the meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables that also arrive on boats and trucks from the fertile southern provinces.

This market is where other markets buy their produce: Bình Điền is quite literally Saigon’s market of markets. For this reason you need lớn get here early: by 6.30am most of the produce has been bought, và workers are packing up ready for a well-earned, hearty breakfast. However, it’s well worth setting your alarm, because Bình Điền is like all Saigon’s markets rolled into one. There’s a palpable excitement amongst both the buyers & the sellers: everyone seems khổng lồ know they’re partaking in something special, and on a grand scale. Produce is divided into separate hangers (each hanger big enough to lớn fit multiple jumbo jets): there’s one for fish, one for shellfish & vegetables, & one for meat. The shellfish hanger echoes lớn the sound of shells being shoveled into boxes.

Most of the seafood – including shellfish – is alive; thrashing around in big metallic containers full of bubbling water. Despite the enormity of this market it’s extremely well-organized & efficient. Bình Điền is quite far from downtown Saigon, but these days, with all the city’s new infrastructure, the journey is reasonably short. There are more rice paddies and fish farms in the vicinity than buildings, but the District 1 skyline is still visible on the horizon. If you bởi come, vì as the locals do và wear boots or substantial footwear: leave your flip-flops at trang chủ because it seems the fish brought most of their natural habitat with them khổng lồ this market!

4. Bà Chiểu Market:

Address:corner of Phan Đăng Lưu & Bùi Hữu Nghĩa streets, bình thạnh District: <MAP>

Off the burgeoning Phan Đăng lưu lại Street, Bà Chiểu Market is another Cold War-style nuclear bunker from the outside. But inside it’s equal to the busy road it fronts in intensity & pace. This is a big and busy market that has a rougher edge than the others in this list: more frantic, more local, more unruly, a little less friendly but just as jammed full of produce và energy.

Absolutely everything seems to be on sale here. The market follows the familiar pattern of fruit and vegetables around the outside, dry goods along the narrow outer circle, & meat và fish at the centre. The stalls are tightly packed & labyrinthine, so much so that the atmosphere is almost ‘cosy’. There’s a first floor clothes market where you can find bags, scarves, belts và blankets too. Many of the items have price tags on them, but these should be used only as a guide for how much to bargain down to: from two-thirds khổng lồ a half of the ‘official’ price tag is usually the ‘real’ price. Thus, a scarf with a 100,000VNĐ tag on it should be bargained down lớn 50-70,000VNĐ. Great value Vietnamese dishes are available at the market canteen along the western edge of the building.

5. Hòa Hưng Market:

Address:539A cách Mạng mon Tám Street, District 10: <MAP>

Yet another deeply unimpressive concrete exterior masks this compact và lively market. Hòa Hưng is on one of Saigon’s worst roads for traffic and noise, but once you enter its military façade all this is replaced by the sound of the market in full swing: the chopping of meat with shining cleavers on wooden chopping boards; the rustle of grains of rice being portioned out into bags; the slap of live fish being slammed on the counter to lớn stun them; the yelling, laughter & banter between fish mongers and butchers.

It’s on a smaller scale than the other markets in this list, which makes it much more manageable, but it still has all the energy & punch of a big market. Meat, fish, noodles, rice, spices, candies, sauces, fruit, vegetables, jewelry, & clothes are all sold in a relatively small space. It would be such a shame if, in the future, the sterile, soporific environment of the supermarket takes over from these local wet markets in Saigon.