Bình Thạnh, Ho Chi Minh City — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Bình Thạnh?

The river is the headline sight. Bình Thạnh gives Ho Chi Minh City one of its longest stretches of Saigon River frontage, and the walkable riverside is what most visitors come to see, backed by a dense wall of towers rising from the old Gia Định lands. Bridges cross toward Thủ Đức.

The Thị Nghè channel threads the southern boundary, carrying small boats past the district and on toward the heart of the city.

What is the history of Bình Thạnh?

Bình Thạnh grew out of Gia Định. The land on this bank of the Saigon River belonged to the old province of that name long before it was folded into the metropolis and renamed as a numbered-and-named urban district of Ho Chi Minh City. Its lanes still carry that older village grain.

Where central District 1 was laid out in wide colonial blocks, Bình Thạnh kept the tighter weave of the market settlements that lined the river.

Where is Bình Thạnh?

The district covers a low, tropical wedge of roughly twenty square kilometres on the right bank of the Saigon River, hemmed south by the Thị Nghè channel and west by Phú Nhuận, with the Vàm Thuật River closing its northern edge.