HO CHI MINH CITY

Ho Chi Minh City (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh), formerly known as Saigon (Sài Gòn), is the largest city in Vietnam. It was the capital of the French colony of Cochinchina and later of the independent Republic of South Vietnam from 1955–75. South Vietnam, as an anti-communist, capitalist republic, fought against the communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, with aid from the United States of America and countries including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Saigon fell when it was captured by the communists on 30 April 1975, ending the war with a Communist victory. Vietnam was then turned into a communist state with the South overtaken. On 2 July 1976, Saigon merged with the surrounding Gia Định Province and was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City after Hồ Chí Minh (although the name Sài Gòn is still commonly used).

Ho Chi Minh City has gone by several different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic, cultural and political groups. In the 1690s, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the Mekong Delta and its surroundings. Control of the city and the area passed to the Vietnamese, who gave the city the official name of Gia Định (嘉定). This name remained until the time of the French conquest in the 1860s, when the occupying force adopted the name Saigon for the city, a westernized form of the traditional name, although the city was still indicated as 嘉 定 on Vietnamese maps written in Chữ Hán until at least 1891. Immediately after the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975, a provisional government renamed the city after Hồ Chí Minh, the late North Vietnamese leader. Even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora. In particular, Sài Gòn is still commonly used to refer to District 1.

Citizens of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Laos holding valid ordinary passports are allowed to stay for not more than 30 days without visa; those of Philippines will get 21 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City and http://wikitravel.org/en/Ho_Chi_Minh_City