Ho Chi Minh City, which most people still call Saigon

On 30 April 1975, North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon, and the Vietnam War was over. The following year, the city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the revolutionary leader who had died in 1969. Officially, that is its name. But in everyday speech, the old name has never gone away. Many people in the south still call the city Saigon, the central district is often referred to that way, and the name survives in the airport code, on the river, and on the labels of the local beer.

The city is Vietnam's largest and its commercial engine, a sprawling metropolis of some nine million people and, it often seems, nearly as many motorbikes. It is hotter, faster and more openly commercial than Hanoi, with a different character. Where Hanoi is the country's political and cultural capital, Saigon is its marketplace.

French Saigon

The French took Saigon in 1859, and it became the capital of their colony of Cochinchina and, for a time, of French Indochina. They laid out boulevards, squares and parks, and the landmarks they left are still at the heart of the city. The red-brick Notre-Dame Cathedral, completed in 1880, with two square towers, stands across a square from the Central Post Office. The post office is a grand nineteenth-century building with an iron-vaulted hall and a large portrait of Ho Chi Minh at the far end. The Opera House, built at the turn of the twentieth century, is close by. Old hotels in the colonial style, such as the Continental, were the haunts of war correspondents and writers in the 1950s and 1960s, and of characters in Graham Greene's The Quiet American.

The war

Two places in the city tell the story of the war from the winning side's point of view. The Reunification Palace, formerly the Independence Palace, was the residence and office of the South Vietnamese president. It has been preserved much as it was in 1975, a striking piece of 1960s modernist architecture, with its meeting rooms, war room and bunker, and tanks of the kind that broke through its gates on display in the grounds. The War Remnants Museum is one of the city's most visited museums, and a harrowing one. Its photographs of the war, its exhibits on the effects of Agent Orange and its reconstructed prison cells are deliberately unsparing.

Cholon, the markets and the food

Cholon, the old Chinese district to the west of the centre, has been home to a large Chinese community for centuries. Its temples, such as the incense-filled Thien Hau Pagoda, and its wholesale markets are a world away from the colonial centre. Ben Thanh Market, in the centre, is the city's best-known covered market, busy with stalls of food, fabric and souvenirs.

The food is a large part of the reason to come. Saigon's street food is famous: bowls of pho, the noodle soup, served with heaps of fresh herbs; banh mi, the baguette sandwich left behind by the French and transformed with pâté, pickles, chillies and coriander; com tam, broken rice with grilled pork. Vietnamese iced coffee, strong and sweetened with condensed milk, is drunk at every hour on low plastic stools on the pavement.

The best way to see the city is to rise early. At dawn, before the heat and the traffic build, the parks fill with people doing tai chi, playing badminton and dancing to music from portable speakers, and the cafés open their shutters. In the evening, the old district around the riverside and the main boulevards is the place for a walk, as the lights come on and the city cools.

The tours

Just You's Discover Vietnam, twelve nights for solo travellers, includes Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, with Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue and Hoi An. Explore Worldwide's Simply Vietnam, nine nights, includes Ho Chi Minh City with Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Cat Ba Island and Lan Ha Bay.

Travelsphere's Invitation to Vietnam and the Temples of Angkor, thirteen nights, includes Ho Chi Minh City with Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue and Hoi An, as well as Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor in Cambodia.

Saigon can be overwhelming at first, with the traffic, the noise and the heat. Give it a couple of days, cross the road at a slow, steady pace so that the motorbikes can flow around you, and its energy becomes part of the pleasure.