Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Approaching HCMC on the highway, it was evident that this was a huge city from all the various factories of companies from other countries, like Coca-Cola and Kohler, on the outskirts of the city. Also, it seemed like we were in the city for thirty minutes on the highway before we actually passed into the proper city limits.

Today, I got a chance to visit some of the museums that the city has to offer. The Museum of Ho Chi Minh City was interesting to me probably for the history of the building more than anything else. It had been built as a French museum in the 1890s, but, after the Vietnamese began resisting the French in 1945 after the Japanese surrendered, the French used the building as their governor's South Vietnamese headquarters from 1945 up until the final South Vietnamese capitulation in 1975. The museum had been the site of various Communist pro-resistance demonstrations during the years of French occupation and probably during the American occupation as well.

The Reunification (or Independence) Palace was the next place that I spent some extended time. This palace was the official and living quarters of the president of the South Vietnamese government from 1945 to 1975, when the North Vietnamese actually burst through the front gate with a tank. The furnishings in the offices were quite elaborate, and the palace also featured its own cinema with plush chairs and a dance floor on the top floor of the palace with a stage for a band and a large wooden floor for dancing. A secret staircase, long since discovered, led from the president's office on the 2nd floor down to the huge bomb shelter and war rooms in the basement, which was quite a labyrinth of rooms in its own right.

After eating lunch in a restaurant blasting alternately techno music and Vietnamese pop music (some of which wasn't bad, and the food was good), I visited the War Remnants museum, which was pretty harrowing and almost brought me to tears a couple of times. The Museum documents the various wars that have been fought with Vietnam as the battleground in the 20th century and the horrible consequences of those wars. There were photos of victims of Agent Orange, the chemical used to defoliate stretches of dense jungle in Vietnam during the American War to make it the NVA more visible to the American army. There were photos of completely bombed villages that have just been rebuilt in the last 20 years. It's remarkable that some of these villages recovered at all when you see the original devastation in the photographs. There was an incredible collection of photos taken from various journalists who died covering the American War of both Vietnamese and American soldiers in battle. A part of the museum was devoted to cataloguing the various types of torture that the French, the South Vietnamese, and the US army used or authorized the use of against the North Vietnamese army and the South Vietnamese resistance. Exhibits included a French guillotine that was used up until the 1960s to execute prisoners.

It definitely wasn't a fun museum to visit, but I began to realize the complete devastation that overtook this country after the end of World War II. Ultimately, it makes traveling within this country all the more enjoyable when it's visible how far the country has recovered and grown and how much more is possible.