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Northeast Ho Chi Minh City · Tallest tower, oldest grudge

Bình Thạnh

Vietnam's tallest building stands a few kilometers from a tomb that a king once had chained and whipped in punishment. Bình Thạnh is Saigon's most contradictory district, and almost no visitor stops long enough to notice.

History

Long before it had a tallest tower, this stretch of riverbank was five separate hamlets recorded by 19th-century chroniclers — and much of its modern shape was set not by planners, but by a Cold War-era refugee wave.

Early 19th century

Scholar-official Trịnh Hoài Đức records five hamlets on this stretch of riverbank in his Gia Định Thành Thông Chí — Bình Hòa, Bình Lợi Trung, Thạnh Đa, Phú Mỹ and Bình Quới Tây — all part of Bình Trị canton, Gia Định province.

1897

French engineers cut a short canal through Thạnh Đa hamlet to shorten a river bend by 12 km. The unintended side effect: the peninsula becomes an island, cut off from the mainland — see Places to discover below.

1911

Gia Định province is split into four districts. The area is folded into Gò Vấp district, administered from the old French provincial hall — still standing today as the district's seat of government.

1954

After the Geneva Accords split the country, a large wave of Catholic refugees from North Vietnam settles in the Bình Hòa – Thạnh Mỹ Tây area, following President Ngô Đình Diệm's resettlement drive. Their parish churches still anchor several neighborhoods.

May 1975 – June 1976

Bình Hòa and Thạnh Mỹ Tây, until then communes of Gò Vấp district, are briefly elevated to separate districts, then merged on 20 May 1976 into a single new district: Bình Thạnh.

2022

Population reaches roughly 552,000 across 20.8 km² — a dense, mostly residential district squeezed between the Sài Gòn River and the city center.

2025

A citywide ward reform dissolves the district structure, but its new wards are named Gia Định, Bình Hòa, Thạnh Mỹ Tây and Bình Quới — reviving, almost word for word, the historic place names the area has carried since the 19th century.

Five hamlets, two riverbanks

Bình Thạnh's shape today still traces the outline of the five hamlets first mapped out under the Nguyễn dynasty — plus one 20th-century addition that changed everything: an entire community that arrived at once.

Bình Hòa

The urban core

The westernmost and most built-up of the original hamlets, Bình Hòa gave its name to one of the two districts that merged to form Bình Thạnh in 1976 — and to one of the new wards revived in 2025.

Thạnh Mỹ Tây

Three hamlets folded into one

Formed by merging Thạnh Đa, Phú Mỹ and Bình Quới Tây in the early 20th century, this name covered the riverside area that includes today's Thanh Đa peninsula. It became Bình Thạnh's other founding half in 1976.

The 1954 arrivals

A community that didn't grow — it landed

Unlike the older hamlets, which formed gradually, the Catholic refugee community that settled here after 1954 arrived within a few short years, following the country's partition. Their parish churches remain some of the most visible landmarks in the district's western neighborhoods.

Gia Định

The name that outlived the province

Before it was ever "Bình Thạnh," this land was administered from Gia Định — once the seat of an entire province covering much of what's now Ho Chi Minh City. The old French provincial hall on Phan Đăng Lưu street still serves as the district's administrative seat today.

Two monuments, 170 years apart

Lăng Ông Bà Chiểu — imperial Huế, transplanted south

Built in 1848 to honor Tả quân (Left Marshal) Lê Văn Duyệt, this tomb-and-temple complex sits on a raised mound beside Bà Chiểu market, walled in by a 500-meter perimeter with four gates. Its southern Tam Quan gate, rebuilt in 1949, borrows directly from the triple-arch gatehouses of the imperial capital Huế — an unusual flourish of court architecture this far south. Before 1975 it appeared on postcards as an unofficial symbol of Saigon itself, alongside Huế's Thiên Mụ pagoda tower as the two emblems of north and south — the gate was even reproduced on the back of the Republic of Vietnam's 1966 100-đồng banknote, with Lê Văn Duyệt's portrait on the front. It was formally recognized as a national historic and cultural site in 1989.

Landmark 81 — 461.5 meters, a few kilometers away

Opened in 2018, Landmark 81 is Vietnam's tallest building and, for a few years, was the tallest in Southeast Asia. It rises from the same riverside district that Lê Văn Duyệt once governed as a semi-autonomous viceroy — a genuinely strange juxtaposition once you know to look for it: an imperial-era tomb built to honor a man who defied a king, standing in the shadow of a 21st-century skyscraper built to advertise a very different kind of ambition.

Places to discover

Thanh Đa peninsula, the accidental island

Wards 27–28, Bình Thạnh

In 1897, French engineers cut a 1-km canal through Thạnh Đa hamlet — 40 meters wide, 6 meters deep, dug in a single year — purely to shave 12 km off a river shipping route. It worked, but it also severed the peninsula from the mainland, turning it into what is technically an island. For over three decades the peninsula stayed largely rural — rice paddies and fish ponds a stone's throw from the glass towers of Thảo Điền across the water — while successive master plans for an "eco-urban zone" stalled. In 2025, city authorities approved a new development plan covering nearly 550 hectares, with a Sun Group-led investor consortium now committed to bringing the long-delayed vision to life. Today the peninsula still holds the Bình Quới tourist village and some of the district's last patches of green.

Cư Xá Thanh Đa, one of Saigon's first apartment blocks

Wards 27–28, Bình Thạnh

Built between roughly 1968 and 1973, Cư Xá Thanh Đa was among the very first large apartment complexes in Saigon — 22 blocks and around 4,300 units built as a model middle-class community, complete with its own school, market and clinic, sold on installment to civil servants and military officers. It remains a rare, still-inhabited example of late-1960s Vietnamese urban housing, even as parts of the aging complex have since been redeveloped.

The Sunday antiques market, with a bird café next door

311/27 Nơ Trang Long street

Tucked down an alley near the Băng Ky bridge, the courtyard of Cà Phê Cao Minh — known to regulars simply as Chợ Đồ Cổ, "the antiques market" — turns into one of the city's most eccentric weekend gatherings. Saturdays bring out vintage motorbikes and cars; Sundays fill the yard with stalls of old lighters, coins, watches, film cameras, propaganda posters and paper money, sold mostly by middle-aged and elderly dealers who look like they stepped out of pre-1975 Saigon themselves. A small entry fee doubles as credit toward a coffee or a snack, and upstairs seating lets browsers watch the trading below over a drink. Parking is at Vườn Chim — "Bird Garden" — the café immediately next door, whose caged songbirds and quieter courtyard make a fitting contrast to the crowded antiques stalls just a few steps away.

The general a king punished after death

Lê Văn Duyệt, the marshal who wouldn't kneel

Lê Văn Duyệt governed the entire south of Vietnam as Tổng trấn (viceroy) of Gia Định from 1812, a reward for his service to founding emperor Gia Long. He'd earned an unusual privilege along the way: the right to enter the royal court without bowing. When Gia Long's preferred successor was passed over in favor of Minh Mạng, Duyệt made his disapproval known — and kept making it known, protecting European missionaries the new emperor distrusted and once executing an official on his own authority, without royal permission.

The tension simmered for years. Then, shortly after Duyệt's death in 1832, his adopted son led an uprising against Minh Mạng's rule. When the revolt was crushed, the emperor's court convicted the dead marshal in absentia of seven capital crimes and two more offenses punishable by strangulation. Soldiers were sent to level his grave, wrap it in iron chains, symbolically strike it 100 times, and erect a stone tablet reading: "Here the eunuch usurper Lê Văn Duyệt paid for his crimes."

It took nine years and a change of emperor to undo. In 1841, Minh Mạng's son and successor Thiệu Trị had the chains and the stone removed, acknowledging his father's judgment as unjust. In 1848, under Emperor Tự Đức, the tomb was formally rebuilt into the complex that stands today — the very Lăng Ông Bà Chiểu described above. Nearly two centuries later, it's one of the most visited religious sites in the city, and the man once condemned as a traitor is now honored every year with a state-recognized memorial ceremony.

Three addresses worth the detour

Lẩu Đuôi Bò Nguyễn Văn Đậu

~150,000–300,000 VND / group

188A Nguyễn Văn Đậu street, Ward 7

A neighborhood institution built entirely around oxtail hotpot — brisket, tendon and oxtail simmered until falling apart, served with fresh beef and greens on the side. Arguably the best-known version of the dish in the whole city.

Há Cảo 45

~25,000–60,000 VND

45 Nguyễn Văn Lạc street

An evening-only dumpling stall — open 4pm to 10pm only — serving steamed hà cảo (shrimp dumplings) to a steady stream of regulars from the surrounding blocks.

Cháo vịt Thanh Đa

~50,000–90,000 VND

Thanh Đa peninsula area, Ward 27

Duck congee is the peninsula's unofficial specialty — a cluster of family-run stalls near the tourist village serve it the way it's been made for decades, alongside grilled duck and dipping sauce sharp with ginger and chili.

Getting there

Bình Thạnh borders District 1 directly, so parts of it — especially around Đinh Tiên Hoàng and Điện Biên Phủ streets — are within a 10-15 minute scooter or taxi ride of downtown. The Thanh Đa peninsula sits further out, best combined with a half-day trip that also covers Lăng Ông Bà Chiểu and Bà Chiểu market, all within a few kilometers of each other.

For a sense of scale, the observation deck of Landmark 81 offers a view back over the district from above — a useful way to see, all at once, just how much has been built around a 19th-century tomb that refuses to be overshadowed.

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