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Đầm Sen · A racetrack, a cemetery and a lotus pond, all folded into one district

District 11

Little of District 11's history is written on street signs. A racetrack once ranked among the largest in Asia gave way to sports facilities; the region's oldest cemetery gave way to a boulevard; and a marshy lotus pond, cleared by volunteer labor after reunification, became one of the city's best-loved parks.

History

District 11 was assembled from villages that bordered Chợ Lớn on its northern edge — close enough to inherit a strong Chinese community, distinct enough to develop its own landmarks.

1880

Under French administration, the area is grouped into Hạt 20, an administrative unit whose villages — Bình Thới, Hòa Hưng, Minh Phụng, Phú Lâm, Tân Hóa, Tân Phước, Tân Thành — border the city of Chợ Lớn directly.

1932

The Phú Thọ racetrack opens on a 48-hectare site — see Anecdotes, below, for what the land had been used for previously.

1 July 1969

District 11 is formally established under the Republic of Vietnam's Saigon Capital administration, carved from land split off District 5 and District 6, with four founding wards: Phú Thọ, Bình Thới, Cầu Tre and Phú Thọ Hòa.

1972

Two more wards, Bình Thạnh and Phú Thạnh, are added, bringing the district to six wards by the time of reunification in 1975.

1976–1978

Following a call from city authorities, tens of thousands of workers from across Ho Chi Minh City are mobilized to dredge and replant a derelict marshland once used for growing lotus — the beginning of what will become Đầm Sen Park; see Anecdotes, below.

1983

The reclaimed lotus marsh officially opens as Đầm Sen Cultural Park, developed further in later decades into one of the city's largest amusement and water parks.

2003–2011

The Phú Thọ Sports Complex, including a modern indoor arena, is built adjacent to the old racetrack grounds; the racetrack itself, Vietnam's last operating horse-racing venue, closes permanently in May 2011.

2025

A citywide ward reform redraws District 11's internal boundaries once more, part of a broader restructuring across the city.

Four wards, two former districts

District 11's founding geography still shapes how residents describe different corners of it today.

Phú Thọ

Split from District 5

The southeastern portion of District 11, inherited from old District 5, carried the Phú Thọ name that would later attach itself to the racetrack, the sports complex, and eventually a newly reorganized ward.

Cầu Tre, Bình Thới, Phú Thọ Hòa

Split from District 6

These three wards, inherited from old District 6, were renamed at least once — Phú Thọ Hòa became Phú Hòa after 1975 specifically to avoid confusion with a same-named ward in neighboring Tân Sơn Nhì district, a small but telling example of how crowded Saigon's naming conventions eventually became.

Two pagodas, two centuries apart

Chùa Phụng Sơn, built on Khmer ruins

1408 Đường 3 Tháng 2 street

Founded around 1802 by monk Liễu Thông on the ruins of an abandoned Khmer temple, this pagoda sat on a small mound ringed by a lotus-filled pond — earning it the popular nickname Chùa Gò, "mound pagoda." Excavations in the 1980s and early 1990s turned up terracotta faces and pottery belonging to Óc Eo culture, the Mekong Delta civilization that predates Vietnamese settlement here by well over a millennium, layered directly beneath a Nguyễn-dynasty-era Buddhist temple. Built in traditional Southern Vietnamese style with a wooden frame and yin-yang tiled roof, the pagoda was recognized as a national historical-cultural relic in 1988.

Chùa Giác Viên, born from a woodpile

161/85/20 Lạc Long Quân street

In 1798, timber being floated downriver for renovations at Giác Lâm pagoda was unloaded and stored at a landing known as Hố Đất. A small caretaker's hut built to watch over the lumber gradually became a proper shrine, formally renamed Chùa Giác Viên in 1850. Recognized as a national heritage site in 1993, it remains known almost as often by its older nickname, Chùa Hố Đất — "the pagoda of the earthen pit" — after the landing where its story began.

Places to discover

Hà Tôn Quyền dumpling street

Hà Tôn Quyền street, Ward 7

Known locally as "sủi cảo street," this stretch is lined with Chinese dumpling shops open from early morning until midnight, several of them decades old. Sủi cảo — Cantonese-style dumplings, served dry-tossed or in broth — is the specialty, but the same few blocks also turn up roast meats, noodle soups and other dishes carried down through District 11's long-standing Chinese community.

Đầm Sen flower market

Nguyễn Văn Phú street, Ward 5

Running behind Lạc Long Quân street, this short but busy market has supplied cut flowers to Saigon households for decades, its stalls busiest in the early morning and again ahead of Tết, when the whole street disappears under blossoms.

Two stories the guidebooks skim past

The racetrack built on the region's oldest cemetery

Before it hosted horses, the 48-hectare site that became Phú Thọ racetrack was Nghĩa Địa Phú Thọ — by most accounts, the largest and oldest cemetery in the greater Saigon–Chợ Lớn–Gia Định area. When the Saigon Racing Club purchased the land to build a larger racetrack in 1932, the remains buried there were exhumed and reinterred elsewhere before construction began. The track operated, with interruptions, for the better part of eighty years — surviving both World Wars, a postwar hiatus, and a 1989 revival as the Phú Thọ Sports Club — before closing for good in 2011. Long after the graves were cleared and the horses retired, the site's layered past is now folded into sports facilities and, increasingly, new roads cut through the old grounds.

The park that thousands of volunteers dug by hand

Before 1975, the land now occupied by Đầm Sen Park was neglected marshland, remembered by longtime residents mainly for the wild lotus that grew there — hence the name, đầm sen, "lotus marsh." Between 1976 and 1978, following a call from city authorities, tens of thousands of workers mobilized from districts across Ho Chi Minh City dredged the marsh and planted trees, transforming derelict wetland into usable parkland by hand, without heavy machinery. The park officially opened in 1983 and has since grown into one of the city's largest recreational complexes — a rare case of a major Saigon landmark built not by a developer or a colonial administration, but by an organized mass mobilization of ordinary citizens.

Four addresses, mostly Chinese

Tiệm Cơm Truyền Ký

~150,000–250,000 VND

39/20 Lý Thường Kiệt street, Ward 7

A Hakka (người Hẹ) family restaurant founded in the 1950s by Diệp Hữu Truyền, today run by his grandson — salt-baked chicken and braised pork offal are the standouts, served in a dining room that still feels like an old Chinese-Vietnamese household kitchen.

Sủi Cảo Thiên Thiên

~70,000–90,000 VND

195 Hà Tôn Quyền street, Ward 7

One of the longest-running stops on dumpling street, known for quick service and a menu that covers both dry-tossed and soup-style sủi cảo.

Lại Ký Mì Gia

~50,000–100,000 VND

District 11

A small, no-frills noodle shop specializing in Chinese-style egg noodles and sesame satay sauce — the kind of place locals return to for the noodles alone rather than the setting.

Quán Ăn Hoàng Oai

~200,000–400,000 VND

District 11

Roast chicken and squab feature heavily on the menu here, in a space large enough for the wedding parties and family celebrations it regularly hosts.

Getting there

District 11 borders District 5, District 6 and Tân Bình, typically a 10-15 minute scooter or taxi ride from central Saigon. Đầm Sen Park, Chùa Phụng Sơn and Hà Tôn Quyền street sit at different points across the district, better linked by scooter than on foot.

Hà Tôn Quyền street is at its liveliest from late afternoon into the evening, when most of its dumpling shops are running at full capacity.

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