Where to Get Paintings at Local Prices in HCMC

For super affordable paintings in HCMC Vietnam, head on over to Tran Phu street in District 5. I read somewhere that this is where the locals buy their art and I wasn’t disappointed. The prices were less than half the price of the paintings we liked in the more touristy area of Dong Khoi. It is really worth a cab ride to this part of town, if you want to buy some Vietnamese Paintings. We walked someway down the street checking out many art galleries, but ended up going back to the first store we entered, Phong Tranh Van Khan, because it had the best selection, good quality and low prices.

The lady in the store was really helpful. When we liked a painting, she would stand it up apart from the rest. We then narrowed it down to 6 paintings. If I am not mistaken, we were able to bargain down to 50% of the price. We spent less than USD 200 (maybe somewhere nearer to USD 100). We’ve spent more for one painting in Yogyakarta (but of course the caliber is different). We were really really happy with our purchases. I would highly recommend this store to anyone visiting HCMC in search of art pieces or paintings.

These are the 2 paintings that didn’t make the cut. I sorta regret not buying the nude on the right, but I just felt like it was way too revealing than I would like in my home. It is really lovely though – almost like a photograph don’t you think?

They also provide art carrying tubes or containers. They rolled em up, packed them into it and then made a makeshift strap/handle for easy hand-carrying while traveling. The only thing that I was frustrated about is that they packed in too many paintings in one of the tubes (he used a total of 2 tubes for 6 paintings). When I could see he was having a hard time pushing it in, I tried to ask him for one more but he didn’t understand me. Because it was packed so tight, some of the paintings cracked and stuck to the adjacent painting. Thankfully it’s not so noticeable with this style of painting (tons of brush strokes for the trees) so it’s not noticeable at all.

#DiploTips: Ask them to pack fewer paintings in each tube. But ask them to put a piece of paper in between paintings so they don’t get damaged. You may need a translator for this or translate the phrase before going to the store since the main problem was they couldn’t understand me at all. Note that they don’t really speak any english here. Our transaction was all using a calculator to understand each other.