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- “The default arrival experience is a fight. Around 9 million motorbikes make every road crossing a skill you have to learn, unlicensed taxis…” RuinMyTrip research
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Ho Chi Minh City in 2026: 6.58 million international visitors in ten months, 9 million motorbikes, and a metro that finally works
By RuinMyTrip Editorial
Ho Chi Minh City is the most energetic city in Southeast Asia and the one that most reliably overwhelms people in the first hour. It took more than 6.58 million international visitors in the first ten months of 2025, 65.9 per cent of a 10 million target, with tourism revenue of 208.06 trillion Vietnamese dong against a 290 trillion dong goal, roughly 11 billion US dollars. It is a working commercial city that happen…
What nearly ruins it: The default arrival experience is a fight. Around 9 million motorbikes make every road crossing a skill you have to learn, unlicensed taxis clone the branding of legitimate operat…
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Written by RuinMyTrip Editorial from published research and official sources, not from a personal trip. It is not a traveler review and is never counted in the community rating. How we research.
Practical tips
Editorial- Use Grab, Be or Xanh SM instead of hailing a taxi. Fares are fixed and shown before you accept, which removes the entire rigged-meter problem in one step.
- Do not take a parked cab outside Ben Thanh Market or a major tourist site. That area is the most active scam zone in the city, and unlicensed cars there copy the livery of Mai Linh and Vinasun with meters that climb fast.
- Learn the road crossing technique in the first hour. With around 9 million motorbikes, you walk at a slow, steady, predictable pace and let the traffic flow around you. Stopping or stepping back is what causes accidents.
- Take Metro Line 1. It opened in December 2024, runs 19.7 km and 14 stations from Ben Thanh to Suoi Tien, carried over 20.5 million passengers in 2025, and it is air conditioned, which matters more than it sounds.
- Ignore unsolicited tour and package offers on the street. Vietnamese authorities logged dozens of complaints in the first quarter of 2026 over vacation package sales, contract violations and high-pressure selling.
- Expect haze from December to April. PM2.5 in the city runs at roughly three times the WHO annual guideline value and is worst in the dry season, so bring what you need if you are asthmatic.
- Eat at the plastic-stool places. The gap between a street bowl of pho or banh mi and a restaurant version is enormous in price and usually favours the street in quality too.
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