Museums
Here are some of my favorite museums to visit in Saigon. Just remember though, that most of these museums close at mid day between 12 and 1.30pm, so don't turn up at 12.30pm like I did a couple of times when I first arrived in Vietnam and find the entrance locked.
War Remnants Museum
Formerly named "The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government [of South Vietnam]", this museum under its more tourist friendlier name "The War Remnants Museum," is a museum that informs visitors about what the Vietnamese people went through during the Vietnam War, and how the war still affects people today.
And while most of the issues that are covered in the museum are already well known in the West, what the museum does do is allow you to see the negative affects of these issues up close and personal.
For example, one of the key displays, and an issue most Westerners would already know about, is the issue of Agent Orange.
What most Westerners wouldn't know, or have seen before, are images of how the toxin actually affects living people and unborn fetuses in various unpleasant ways.
At the War Remnants Museum, the display on Agent Orange puts all this on display for the visitor to see.
Stepping inside the main squared shaped display building, the display on Agent Orange is the first display you come across.
The display contains numerous photos showing people born with deformations due to their families living in areas that were sprayed with agent range. Many of these images are of children born with bulbous odd shaped heads, missing eyes, or limbs twisted and deformed into awkward and acute angles.
Along side these photos are a number of jars containing preserved fetuses. Often the jars contain two fetuses fused together in unnatural ways, or fetuses with odd shaped or missing facials features.
Sitting peacefully preserved in formaldehyde, the orangey-brown color of the formaldehyde offers a sharp contrast to ghostly white fetuses, highlighting the unpleasant deformities of the fetuses.
In both cases the deformed and distorted bodies are not pleasant to look at, but highlight the lack of thought towards future consequences that often happens when people fight wars.
Other exhibits at the museum include reconstructions of the Tiger Cages in which the South Vietnamese Government housed political prisoners, and various photo displays on the effects of Napalm, the My Lai massacre and photos about the war in general.
The thing I remember most though about the museum was not these displays, but a meeting I had with a young Vietnamese man selling books in the museum courtyard.
Walking among the big hulking American tanks and guns sitting benignly in the courtyard, I met a young Vietnamese man selling books to earn money at the museum.
There was nothing untoward about that. That was until I realized that the young man was missing his right arm from the elbow down, his left leg and one of his eyes.
This was a young man obviously too young to be alive during the Vietnam War, but who's life as he had known it, was blown apart one day by the remnants that wars tend to leave behind. In this case a mine.
This meeting with a victim, and all of the displays, tend to highlight the fact that a large majority of the victims of such wars are often civilians, and that the negative side effects do not stop when the war stops.
Admission is 10,000 dong.
28 Vo Van Tan St, Dist 1
Tel: 930 5587
Times: 7.30 - 11.45am & 1.30 - 5.15pm
Honorable Mentions
Ho Chi Minh Museum (Click here to read more)
Located in a building known as the 'Dragon House,'' this is the location where Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam from in 1911.
Today it is an fascinating museum dedicated to the life and travels of Ho Chi Minh.
This museums looks at the history and development of the city of Ho Chi Minh of the years.
The museum contains displays on such themes as archeology, the economy, revolutionary struggles and early culture of the region.
The museum itself is located in a building built by the French architect Foulhoux in 1885.
Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine
If you are interested in traditional or herbal healing practices at all, this museum is fantastic.
The museum covers the whole history of traditional medicine in Vietnam. The various displays throughout the museum inform the visitor about who the key figures in the development of traditional Vietnamese medicine were, and how it was preformed and the tools and techniques that the practitioners used.
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