10-31-2026 Halloween on Walking Street in Ho Chi Minh City

In Hoi Chi Minh city, they divide areas into districts. We are staying in District 1 which is the tourism district. On the weekends they shut several streets down for cars and scooters. They call this walking street.

Travel Facts

Date: Saturday, October 31, 2026

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — the District 1 area and Walking Street.

Photos and videos: Halloween evening and the following morning, through November 1. Times are Vietnam local time.

Food: Sandwich-and-coffee stalls and a hot-bread vendor appear in the selected media.

A Little Vietnam and Saigon Background

Vietnam had about 101 million people in 2024, according to World Bank population data. In Ho Chi Minh City, World Population Review projects about 10.5 million people in 2026 using its earlier city/province census series. That projection should not be confused with the population of the enlarged municipality after the 2025 merger. That total would be somewhere between 14 and 22.5 million people. The city totals depend on the boundary being counted.

Saigon was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 after reunification, in honor of the late Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Saigon remains a widely used name.

Photos and Videos

Our hotel is on the second floor, the whole city is a tangle of wires dangling off of poles. I took this picture to illustrate. You can't really see it good, but a lot of those wires have been cut. I guess when a wire breaks or they have a problem, they just run a new wire.

This image is taken on Walking Street. The larger bars always have men and women dancing out front. Tonight they were dressed up for Halloween.

Walking street was packed all the way down. You can see those lights in the far distance, that is still walking street. It is very long and on this night very crowded.

This is the entrance to walking street

This was all staged for Halloween. The kids were pretending to be convicts getting out of a prison van.

This is a road that leads to walking street.

This is a group gathered on the street to listen to the band. There is a short video of the band below.

Here is a little sample of the band. What always amazes me is how well they can copy songs. When they sing Western songs there is no accent.

This video is out of sequence and is from earlier in the day. The reason it got included was because you hear this exact thing all day all over the city. They have a megaphone in there and continually loop it. It translates into "come here, here's some hot bread"

Dong is the Vietnamese currency. So 25,000 Dong is 1 us dollar. These sandwich and coffee shops are everywhere. The most expensive sandwich is 2 $