Ho Chi Minh City: Half-Day Private History and Culture Tour

Get acquainted with the historical and cultural essence of Ho Chi Minh City during a comprehensive 4-hour excursion. Delight in exploring prominent landmarks while gaining insight into the region’s historical and contemporary narratives. Opt for either a morning or afternoon journey, each offering distinctive itineraries.

Duration: 4 hours
Cancellation: 1 day learn more
Highlights

The Independence Palace - On April 30th, 1975, what the Vietnamese refer to as the ‘American War’ officially ended when tank number 843 of the North Vietnamese Army crashed through the gates of what was, at the time, the residence of the President of the Republic of Vietnam.

What's Included
  • Sightseeing and entrance fees with local guide
  • English-speaking tour guide
  • Transportation in new air-conditioned vehicle
  • 02 bottles of mineral water per person
What's Not Included
  • Beverage, Tips
  • Others not mentioned in the price above.
  • Lunch
Location
The Independence Palace
106 Nguyen Du, District 1
Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

Customer Ratings
4.9
(97 Ratings)
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B
Aug 31, 2024
Saigon Tour - Spent the afternoon with Tony the guide. Excellent tour with lots of information and fun facts. In addition to the main tourist sites he took us to a very local coffee shop for genuine Vietnamese coffee. Highly recommended.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jobx3087nq
Aug 21, 2024
Great tour! - Tony was an excellent guide. Very knowledgeable and adding extra context, information and answering all of our questions. Thoroughly recommend!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jag723
Aug 19, 2024
Great Tour Highly recommended. - Excellent tour. Tony Duy Anh was very knowledgeable . You will see a lot in a short time. Tony was very helpful and will give you plenty of extra information. You’ll also get lots of restaurant recommendations. It helps to spend time with a local!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Aakash_m
Aug 14, 2024
Great guide and a great way to see Saigon - This was a great experience with our guide Quy and our driver Tay. Quy was phenomenal. Mind you, I am traveling with two teenagers whose world revolves around themselves and their devices. Quy was able to engage them in sweltering heat. Our pickup was at 1pm and Quy was at the lobby by 1245p. He gave us a brief intro of how our day will be, and off we went. Well curated tour. Quy made it fun, informative and we exchanged multiple laughs and conversation about history, culture, education of Vietnamese people. So if you’re looking for a good tour in HCMC, you can pick this tour and make sure you request for Quy. I have been in 36 countries and done multiple city tours - Quy stands out amongst the best for me.
Review provided by Viator
Thedude444
Aug 13, 2024
Saigon tour - Tony was amazing and had so much knowledge on all the locations we visited. I like the experience and highly recommend it
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Harrod291
Aug 11, 2024
Saigon tour - Excellent and fun tour with Tony. Fun and honest guide. I highly recommend this experience for anyone coming to Saigon.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
P1808fpjanm
Aug 10, 2024
Interesting 4 Hour tour of Ho Chi Minh City. - Had a very good tour with our guide Tony. He is very knowledgeable and motivated and made the experience enjoyable and fun. Within 4 hours we visited many parts of the city, would recommend.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Christoph
Aug 10, 2024
Intense afternoon in Saigon - Tony was great in explaining everything from religion to history in Vietnam. I warmly recommend this tour and his guidance
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Susanne_s
Aug 5, 2024
Excellent private tour - Excellent half day tour Phong Tran was very knowledgeable and a great sense of humour, the best way to see interesting places and get around in a comfortable car. Our guide was fabulous
Review provided by Viator
Mikkel_w
Aug 22, 2024
Beware before you sign up for this tour: false advertising - I signed up for this tour and was excited to see Ho Chi Minh City as a first-time visitor along with my husband. I would have given the tour three stars, but due to the tour operator's lack of customer service or care when I contacted them after my tour with concerns, this experience is getting two stars. I don't write this review lightly. I love tourism, exploring new cities and cultures, and supporting small businesses, as a small business owner myself. But I equally believe that consumers should have a complete picture of what they're investing their time and money in, including how a business is run when customers have an issue, especially if the tour is not accurately described. I addressed the following concerns with the tour operator and think it's fair for people looking to book this tour to be aware of. You should have all the CORRECT info before booking so you can decide if the tour is right for you: 1) Saigon Notre Dame Cathedral is closed and covered by scaffolding. No one can go in or get close to it. It shouldn't be listed as a tour inclusion, especially with admission and for 15 minutes. This is false advertising. The operator replied to me with this explanation: "They need to long time for maintenance, about 09 years (from 2018 to 2027)." Then why is it listed as a part of the tour? 2) The tour is only partially guided. Otherwise, you're paying for an expensive car to drive you around. To give you an idea of how affordable taxis are on your own (because I wasn't aware before I visited Vietnam), it's $8 USD for a cab ride from the center of District 1 in Saigon to the airport, 30 minutes away. If I simply wanted a car to drive me from place to place, I would have gotten a cab for a fraction of the price of a private tour. But my husband and I wanted a guided tour of all the places on the itinerary. Tony gave us a great tour of the temple to start. Then a good tour of the Imperial Palace. Then the guided tour part sort of ended. We were shocked to learn that we would be driven to the rest of the spots, but he wasn't really guiding the tour. The stops were to visit the places on our own. This included the War Remnants Museum, the shopping market, and the post office. Tony walked around with us at the market and post office (not the war museum - we walked around on our own and met him where he designed to continue to the remaining places on the itinerary) and answered questions I posed about the places, but didn't give us historical background info, cultural importance info for those places, etc. If I hadn't asked him questions he wouldn't have told us anything about where we were. 3) Tony, our tour guide, asked me to leave a review for the tour in front of him at the end of the tour so he could send it to the tour company. This made my husband and I really uncomfortable, considering that he barely gave us a tour for the final 2 hours of our 4 hour private tour. He asked me to do it twice, and I refused to do it in front of him both times. In all my years of travel around the world, I've never had a guide ask me to do a review in front of him/her. It was incredibly unprofessional. 4) Tony asked us to validate his parking at the end of the tour. While we didn't mind that he asked, it was after he barely gave us a tour for the last half of our experience and after he asked us to write a review in front of him. And now, at the end of our tour that was ending negatively, he wanted us to validate his parking at our hotel? It would have been one thing to ask us if that was okay with it ahead of time at the start of the tour, but it felt like the third strike in a series of unprofessional instances with him. When we asked the tour operator for a partial refund due to our experience (since we felt we got half of what the tour advertised and what we paid for), he said, "Anyway, please forget your trouble, leave behind it, and enjoy a new day, a new trip. Thank you again." We plan on forgetting this happened but only after making the people considering booking this tour aware of the situation so you don't have to go through what we did and can have a more positive experience in Saigon. The tour operator chose this path instead of opting for better customer service and admitting that the tour was only half of what they advertised. Unfortunately, it gave us negative feelings about Saigon as the main experience we had during the little time we had there.
Review provided by Viator
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up to 12 guests
1 Adult
September 2024
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