The Shopping Tour

Whether you love the art of the hard bargain or just love to shop, Saigon is the place for you. There are shopping malls and department stores for easy, air-conditioned browsing where you can let bored children, spouses or travel companions entertain themselves with bowling or video games. Indoor markets like Ben Thanh are bargain havens for those who love the hot, sweaty, hard-earned sell. Want to have clothes custom tailored or a suit made? There are shops everywhere that do it for a tiny fraction of what it would cost back home. Get pants hemmed for 70 cents.

There are even a few shops that do haute couture fashion. Export-quality backpacks and bags, real and fake sports shoes, good quality lacquer, good quality wooden toys, cheap, plastic Chinese imports, good and medium quality embroidered linens and children's clothes, gold and silver jewelry, real and fake antiques, Vietnamese art, paintings and painted reproductions, ceramics, wood and stone carvings, ethnic minority textiles - they're all here plus much more. Good main streets for walking and window-shopping are Le Thanh Ton, Dong Khoi, Nguyen Hue, Le Loi, Ly Tu Trong and Pasteur. Hai Ba Trung is congested but long and has shops that sell everything under the sun. The same can be said for all of Cho Lon.