Voyay walking tour

Thu Thiêm: A City Contested

Walk New Boulevards, Surviving Sanctuaries, and a Rebuilt Riverbank

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
12 stops
231 min
9.7 km
History

Free in the Voyay app

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Thu Thiêm is often treated as a convenient place to photograph downtown Ho Chi Minh City. This walk turns the camera around. It explores the peninsula itself as an unfinished urban argument about land, memory, public space and who benefits when a new center rises. You will begin among resettlement towers and oversized roads before entering Sala’s manicured parks and commercially supported public life. Along the river, tunnel infrastructure, lawns, plazas and Ba Son Bridge reveal how quickly movement and landscape can remake the value of urban land. The most affecting moments come at Thủ Thiêm Parish Church and the neighboring convent. These surviving institutions preserve the intimate scale and community memory of a settlement whose homes, lanes and livelihood networks have largely disappeared. This tour suits curious walkers, architecture enthusiasts and travelers interested in cities beyond postcard skylines. It is worth the time because Thu Thiêm makes urban change visible at every scale, from a quiet churchyard to a bridge spanning two transformed riverbanks.

Try the first stop

Free sample · Stop 1

Bình Khánh Resettlement

Underused apartment towers reveal redevelopment’s unresolved promises to displaced communities.

These repeating apartment towers expose one of Thu Thiêm’s sharpest contradictions: purpose-built resettlement housing remained partly underused while established communities were dispersed. Walk the public streets and compare weathered façades, broad roads and quiet courtyards. The scene asks whether an apartment can ever replace neighbors, livelihoods, parishes and river connections.

The route

12 stops, in order.

1
Stop 1 · Free sample
Bình Khánh Resettlement
Underused apartment towers reveal redevelopment’s unresolved promises to displaced communities.
Stop 2
Mai Chí Thọ Boulevard
A monumental traffic artery shows how infrastructure unlocked Thu Thiêm for development.
3
Stop 3
New City Thủ Thiêm
Polished towers reveal how resettlement property became market-oriented urban real estate.
4
Stop 4
Sala Park
A manicured leisure landscape blurs the boundary between public and private space.
5
Stop 5
Thủ Thiêm Roof Park
A park above the river tunnel turns infrastructure into beloved social space.
6
Stop 6
Saigon Riverfront Park
A newly engineered waterfront overlays cleared neighborhoods and an older tidal landscape.
7
Stop 7
Thủ Thiêm Parish Church
A surviving parish preserves community memory amid cleared land and rising towers.
8
Stop 8
Thủ Thiêm Convent
A shaded convent safeguards women’s history, social care and neighborhood continuity.
9
Stop 9
Riverfront Plaza
A spacious civic stage performs the promise of Thu Thiêm’s future center.
10
Stop 10
Planning Exhibition Center
An ambitious civic landmark embodies the gap between planning and completion.
Stop 11
Ba Son Bridge
A sweeping cable-stayed bridge links two transformed banks and layered histories.
12
Stop 12
Sala Pedestrian Bridge
An ornamental canal reimagines Thu Thiêm’s wetlands as a controlled urban amenity.