Ho Chi Minh City

I

Introduction

Ho Chi Minh City, city in southern Vietnam, located on the Sai Gon River, just northeast of the Mekong River Delta. It is Vietnam’s major port and an important commercial and industrial center. The city has an almost uniformly hot and humid climate, with average high temperatures ranging from 32° C (89° F) in January to 31° F (88° F) in July. A dry season lasts from November to April, and a wet season from May to October. Annual rainfall is 1,860 mm (73 in). The city is named after the revolutionary leader and North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh.

II

Ho Chi Minh City and Its Metropolitan Area

The Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area covers an area of 2,356 sq km (910 sq mi). It is composed of 12 urban wards and 6 rural districts. The rural districts make up more than 90 percent of the total land area and extend from near the Cambodian border in the west to the South China Sea at the mouth of the Sai Gon River in the east. The vast majority of the population, however, lives in the 12 urban wards.

The downtown area, in Ward One, is home to most of the city’s government offices, civic buildings, and well-known monuments. The modern Hall of Reunification (formerly the Presidential Palace, completed in 1966) is located here, as is the ornate City Hall (1908), built by the French during the colonial period. City Hall is now the headquarters of the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, which governs the city. Ben Thanh market, the art museum (formerly the colonial governor’s residence), and the former United States embassy (now the headquarters of the state-run Vietnamese Oil Company) are all located downtown.

In the center of the city is Dong Khoi Street, perhaps the most famous road in the country. Known to the French as Rue Catinat and known during the Vietnam War as Tu Do (Freedom) Street, it stretches only five blocks from Notre Dame Cathedral (1880) to the banks of the Sai Gon River. But Dong Khoi forms the vibrant heart of the entertainment quarter, with restaurants, bars, luxury shops, and a number of famous hotels. At the intersection of Le Loi and Dong Khoi streets is the Municipal Theater, once the seat of the South Vietnamese legislature.

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Outside the city center are broad tree-lined boulevards with offices and residences, many of them built in the French colonial style. The suburb Cholon, lying west of downtown, is home to most of the city’s ethnic Chinese population and has the flavor of a typical Chinatown. Narrow streets are lined with shops selling everything from textile goods to tourist items, furniture, and modern appliances. Cholon also has many of the city’s commercial and industrial businesses. A number of Buddhist pagodas, including Giac Lam Pagoda (1744), as well as mosques, Hindu temples, Catholic churches, and shrines dedicated to patriotic heroes are scattered throughout the city.

III

Population

About 4.9 million people (2003) live in Ho Chi Minh City. The city grew rapidly with the influx of refugees during the Vietnam War (1959-1975), but after the war the government urged more than 1 million people to leave the city for so-called new economic areas in the countryside. Rapid population growth resumed, however, and in the mid-1990s the city was one of the most densely populated in the world, with an average of 20,000 persons per sq km (52,000 per sq mi). The vast majority are ethnic Vietnamese, but there are an estimated 500,000 ethnic Chinese, most of them living in the commercial suburb of Cholon. Most Vietnamese who express a religious preference are Buddhist, but several hundred thousand Catholics live in the metropolitan area. Many of the Catholics were refugees who, fearing persecution by the Communists, fled North Vietnam when that state was created in 1954.

IV

Education, Culture, and Recreation

Ho Chi Minh City has two major universities, Ho Chi Minh University (formerly the University of Saigon, founded in 1954) and the privately run Thang Long College (1989). Government agencies and ministries also run several specialized training institutes. A number of museums are found in the city, including the War Crimes Museum; the Vietnam Revolutionary Museum (1959); the National Art Gallery (1966); the Vietnam History Museum (1958), with exhibits on 3,000 years of human existence in Vietnam; and the Ho Chi Minh Museum (1977), which chronicles the life of Ho Chi Minh. There is also a large zoo. Ho Chi Minh City’s extensive sports facilities include a large tennis center that was formerly a French-run tennis club.