Walks · Cholon (District 5) · 9 November 2026
Đèn Năm Ngọn at night: Saigon's biggest fabric market, asleep
After closing time at the Five-Lamp roundabout, where Soái Kình Lâm, Saigon's largest wholesale fabric market, sits behind rows of teal shutters.
By HCMC Insider · 9 November 2026
By nine on a weekday night, the corner of Trần Hưng Đạo and Phùng Hưng in old District 5 is almost empty. The shutters are down, a street sweeper works around the little roundabout, and the only crowd is at a late-night phở and bánh mì stall on the far corner.
Locals still call this corner Đèn Năm Ngọn, "the five lamps". The name comes from a single lamp post that once stood on the roundabout with five lamps: four lighting the four corners of the junction and one pointing up at the sky. The post standing there today is a modern one, but the name has stuck for generations. Before 1975 this stretch of Trần Hưng Đạo was called Đồng Khánh Street, and that old name lives on in shop names around here.
The long building behind the roundabout is Thương xá Đồng Khánh, and its ground floor is the Soái Kình Lâm fabric market. The market took shape in 1989, when the district gathered the area's fabric traders under one roof here. Stallholders say the name comes from Soái Kình Lâm, a large Chinese restaurant that once stood next door. It grew into Saigon's biggest wholesale fabric market, with close to 1,000 stalls in its early years and around 500 in recent reports. Tailors and shops from the city and the Mekong provinces buy their cloth here; the stalls facing Trần Hưng Đạo are known for áo dài fabric.
At night you notice the buildings instead of the bolts of cloth. Next to the market, a row of older shophouses has tall arched windows picked out in blue, ornate pilasters and wrought-iron balconies full of plants, the mixed French and Chinese style that Cholon merchants built in the early twentieth century. Right beside them rises a plain concrete apartment block with long open galleries, a few decades younger. One short block holds a century of the city.
Look straight down Trần Hưng Đạo and the lit spire of Cha Tam Church glows at the end of the street. In the daytime this is one of the busiest stretches of Cholon; at night it feels like a stage set waiting for the morning.
If you go: come in the daytime to see the fabric market itself (stalls open roughly 7:30am to 4:30pm). It is a wholesale market first, so expect busy traders rather than a souvenir shop. Phùng Hưng Market is a few minutes' walk up Phùng Hưng Street, the herbal medicine shops of Hải Thượng Lãn Ông are close by, and Lâm Thạnh is a good place for a bowl of chè afterwards. At night, the corner is quiet and fine to walk, and makes a good photo stop on the way to Cholon's late food stalls.
