Ward Names and the Merger: Why Your Map Says District 1

What actually changed?

The district tier was abolished nationwide, and this city absorbed two neighbouring provinces on the same day.

Vietnam went from 63 provinces and cities to 34, and from a three-tier local government structure — province, district, ward — to two tiers. All 22 of this city's district-level units ceased to exist as government units: 21 urban and rural districts plus Thủ Đức City, which had been created at the start of 2021 by merging three districts and lasted less than five years.

Saigon Ward is the interesting one. Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15 of 16 June 2025 built it from the whole of the old Bến Nghé ward plus parts of Đa Kao and Nguyễn Thái Bình, and it took effect on 1 July. It takes in the Opera House, City Hall, Notre-Dame, the Central Post Office, Đồng Khởi and the Nguyễn Huệ walking street.

What happened to District 1?

It became four wards: Saigon, Tân Định, Bến Thành and Cầu Ông Lãnh. All four names are in the resolution itself.

So a hostel on Bùi Viện is now in Bến Thành Ward, not Saigon Ward — the backpacker quarter and the market share a name, the Opera House does not. We have not yet built the same table for the other former districts; when we do, it will go up here with the date it was checked.

The totals are no longer in doubt either. The resolution gives 168 units: 113 wards, 54 communes and one special zone. Of those, 112 wards, 50 communes and Côn Đảo were newly formed; five units — Thới Hòa ward and the communes of Long Sơn, Hòa Hiệp, Bình Châu and Thạnh An — were left as they were. That is where the "112 and 50" figure some outlets print comes from.

Vũng Tàu is now Ho Chi Minh City

Legally, yes — and so are Côn Đảo, Hồ Tràm and Long Hải. The city went from landlocked-feeling to having beaches.

This is the change with the strangest consequences. The old Vũng Tàu City became four wards — Vũng Tàu, Tam Thắng, Rạch Dừa and Phước Thắng — plus the unchanged Long Sơn commune, roughly 100 km by road southeast of the centre. The old French Cap Saint-Jacques is now inside the city limits. Côn Đảo, once a district of Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu, is now a special zone of this city, so Ho Chi Minh City contains a remote national-park archipelago you reach by a flight of under an hour. Vũng Tàu on Google Maps shows the distance better than any sentence does.

Practically: a booking site may now offer you a Vũng Tàu hotel as "Ho Chi Minh City". It is a long road trip, not a suburb. The Biên Hòa–Vũng Tàu expressway's full 54 km main route opened on 18 May 2026 and shortens the drive, though some side roads and interchanges were still being finished and weekend traffic still decides how long it takes.

Two more consequences worth carrying. Cu Chi is no longer "Cu Chi District" — it is a set of communes within the city, and one of them is now called Củ Chi commune while the old Củ Chi town went into a commune named Tân An Hội, so anyone writing the old form is working from pre-2025 data. And Mũi Né is now in Lâm Đồng province, sharing a province with Đà Lạt, which quietly changes how a multi-day itinerary gets framed.

Thảo Điền and Thủ Thiêm are now one ward

Both are now An Khánh Ward, despite being completely different propositions.

Thảo Điền is the expat brunch-and-craft-beer neighbourhood with a metro station. Thủ Thiêm is a largely empty half-built financial district across the river from the centre. The resolution folds Thủ Thiêm, An Lợi Đông, Thảo Điền, the old An Khánh and part of An Phú into one An Khánh Ward, so a search or a filter by ward returns both. If you are booking somewhere to stay by ward name, this is the one that will bite you.

Two things people get wrong about the new rules

This city has not banned petrol motorbikes. But most city buses really are free until the end of 2026.

The motorbike ban is a plan, not a rule. Ho Chi Minh City's draft low-emission zone, as reported in August 2026, would start as a pilot in the central area on 1 July 2027 and widen from 2029; the restrictions on petrol bikes inside it are still being worked out. The headlines usually come from Hanoi, and even there the July 2026 pilot is narrower than reported: weekend-evening limits on eleven streets around Hoàn Kiếm Lake, after Hanoi dropped the outright petrol-bike ban it had floated. If you read that Saigon has banned petrol motorbikes, the source is wrong, and you can rent or ride. If you would rather be driven, Klook covers the city's tickets and transport in one place.

Free city buses, on the other hand, are real. The People's Council approved the policy in June 2026, and from 1 July to 31 December 2026 fares are waived on 134 routes inside the city. Interprovincial routes, open-top sightseeing buses and the dedicated airport-connection services are excluded. Since 1 October each ride has to be registered electronically — by Vietnamese ID, the VNeID or MultiGo apps, an e-wallet or a bank card — and the city had not published specific guidance for foreign visitors when we checked, so carry small notes in case a conductor asks for a fare.