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Saigon top 10

• Cholon
  This ethnic-Chinese enclave - the name means "big market" - is an exuberant manifestation of Vietnam's new economic freedoms. The best thing is just to wander, but make sure you visit at least one of the Chinese pagodas, such as Quan Am (see below).
  
  
• War Remnants Museum
  Formerly known as the War Crimes Museum, this is one of those places you have to visit, though it's not for the squeamish. Despite some obvious omissions, such as "crimes" committed by Communist troops, the museum is gradually adopting a more balanced, reconciliatory tone.
  
  
• Reunification Palace
  The former Presidential Palace is a museum-piece of 60s and 70s kitsch, complete with private casino, penthouse bar and red-plus cinema, while a helicopter moulders on the rooftop landing pad. Downstairs in the basement, combat maps still plaster the walls of the command room.
  
  
• Jade Emperor Pagoda
  Of Saigon's many pagodas and temples, this is the most captivating. It was built by the Cantonese community and is dedicated to an exotic array of deities, sheltered by a roof seething with dragons, birds and other, nameless beasts.
  
  
• Revolutionary Museum
  Though some exhibits here duplicate the War Remnants Museum, the building alone justifies a visit. It was the Gia Long Palace, former residence of the French Governor of Cochinchina, whose gardens hide a tank, helicopter and field gun among the lush vegetation.
  
  
• Quan Am Pagoda
  This aged pagoda provides a haven of calm from Cholon's teeming streets. Again, the roof is highly ornamented, this time with little, glazed figures, temples and houses. Inside, huge coils of incense hang from blackened timbers, and a calligrapher sits off to one side writing prayer papers.
  
  
• Sri Thendayyuttapani Temple
  Sadly, you can't get up onto the roof terrace any more, but this Hindu temple is still worth seeking out for its faded portraits and fairy-lights.
  
  
• Sundown at the Rex Hotel
  After a day tramping Saigon's dusty streets, nothing beats a long, lazy aperitif in the Rex's fifth-floor Rooftop Bar.

  and, for a day trip:

• Cao Dai Cathedral
  The cathedral is the headquarters of a wonderfully eclectic religion whose saints include Mohammed, Victor Hugo, Sakyamuni and Winston Churchill. Worshippers in white, yellow, blue and red robes gather four times a day to worship the Supreme Being represented by a rather unnerving "Divine Eye" on a star-spangled globe.
  
  
• Cu Chi Tunnels
  They may have been enlarged for bulky Western frames, but it's still a sobering experience to crawl through these Viet Cong tunnels. The labyrinth extended right underneath an American army base.