Ho Chi Minh City D1 — downtown Saigon
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Recommended song for this article: Call to the Citizens (national anthem of the Republic of Vietnam, aka South Vietnam)
Our 3 day trip in Ho Chi Minh City was mostly planned by Wiew, so it would be a pretty different style from my typical travels — no hassles, no walking in rain, no running to catch my flight, no questionable hostels and absolutely no Chinese food. Ho Chi Minh City’s tourist attractions were all centered in District 1, most of which could be easily seen in a day. We first walked through the famous but way too short Book Street in front of our hotel.
An interesting monument with “Hoang Sa and Truong Sa belong to Vietnam” written in Vietnamese, English and Chinese. These are part of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands) currently occupied by China. In fact, Vietnam refused to Stamp Chinese passports because they contained Chinese maps that included these islands.
Some more communist propaganda on the street. These paintings often feature collectivism such as traditional family values and societal roles, looking very similar to those from North Korea or from China during the Cultural Revolution.
We had a quick lunch in this Banh Mi chain store which Wiew recommended. It cost around 2 dollars, but it was some different kinds of food from the Banh Mi I had from my school’s dining hall. The crunchy bread and juicy meat….again I’m extremely bad at describing food so I’ll skip this part.
First stop of the day was the Independence Palace, more famously known as the Reunification Palace, the top site I had in mind to visit in Ho Chi Minh City. It used to be the presidential palace of South Vietnam. On April 30th, 1975, Vietnam People’s Army’s tanks broke through its gate, ending the southern republic while leaving a famous footage.
Multiple halls used by South Vietnamese officials were now on display. Their sizes were all smaller than what I would have expected from a sovereign nation’s conference or banquet halls. Notably, all the halls and rooms were labeled as rooms for President Nguyen Van Thieu, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, President Duong Van Minh…etc and their families. South Vietnam’s most first president and most representative figure, Ngo Dinh Diem, was no way to be found. I wonder whether this was simply because the palace’s renovation finished only after Ngo’s death, or North Vietnam didn’t want to mention his name for some reason.
On the roof of the palace sit a South Vietnamese helicopter that bombed the presidential palace and defected to the north several days before Saigon’s fall. The attack didn’t cause major damages to the building itself, but dealt a devastating blow to South Vietnam’s morale. In fact, the palace had witnessed an even worse bombing that caused major destruction: in 1962, two South Vietnamese pilots bombed the palace with the aim to assassinate Ngo Dinh Diem. The furious President Diem ordered the palace’s reconstruction, moving to Gia Long Palace to spend his last year of presidency (and life.) Thus, the Independence Palace is a extremely utilitarian brutalist architecture today, instead of its previous France-built Neo-Baroque version that looked like its counterpart Gia Long Palace.
The basement of Independence palace was a bunker built during the war for the president’s protection. The communication device, map room and even the president’s bedroom all bear much resemblance to Tito’s Bunker in Konjic, Bosnia, which I visited last year.
Outside the main building, there was a smaller exhibit hall near the entrance displaying South Vietnam’s rise and fall, including the years under Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, a period of history I was particularly interested in. In fact, on the third day of our trip, we would visit another important site in Ngo’s life (ignoring Wiew’s complaints).
We then visited the War Remnants Museum, which used to be called “The Museum of US and Puppet Crimes” before the normalization of diplomatic relations between the US and Vietnam. (But most exhibits were about US war crimes. I didn’t recall seeing any about those from the South Vietnamese Army. When talking about the Vietnam War, many people see it only as an anti-imperialism war while overlooking the role South Vietnam’s played)
The exhibition ironically started with the quote from the US Declaration of Independence,
which was quickly followed by brutal crimes conducted by American soldiers during the war — soldiers holding children’s corpses for fun, women and children slaughtered without obvious reasons, villages massacred and plundered……it even included testimonies and apologies from a couple of the soldiers after the war. On the third floor was exhibition to showcase how the notorious agent orange continues to poison Vietnamese people even to this day.
The museum was a collection of peoples’ stories, people who were not merely statistical numbers, but those who loved and were loved, who had feelings and emotions, fear and fury. It’s already a must-see in Saigon, already full of international tourists, but I personally feel the museum could try other forms of exhibition (other than plain text and photos) to tell these tragedies in a more penetrative way, like what Sarajevo’s War Museum did with the victim’s relics, etc.
We next walked to Ben Thanh Market, the most touristy market in downtown Saigon. Tourists couldn’t pass by the aisles without being stopped by multiple vendors desperately trying to sell stuffs, but the only thing we could do was to smile back and say thank you. The market sold various souvenirs, foods, clothes, and interestingly, specimens of butterflies and bats. I haven’t seen bat specimens as souvenirs elsewhere in the world.
We tried the coconut from a typical Southeast Asian beverage place in the market — in fact I meant to order Durian shake, but the lady didn’t understand my broken Vietnamese at all (Did I manage to butcher the pronunciations that bad?) As my own travel tradition, and because I was about to run out of clean clothes, I also purchased a T-shirt with Saigon’s logo on it.
I thought the random noodle place in Ben Thanh Market looked like a good dinner option, but Wiew had other plans. We went to the famous Vietnamese restaurant near the market, a place featuring creative Vietnamese dishes, which were all top-notch had they not contained mushrooms. Wiew also got to try the famous Vietnamese 333 beer.
This restaurant was apparently famous among Korean travelers — nearly everyone dining was Korean (perhaps some “influencers” recently came here?), except for a Taiwanese guy seemingly taking his girlfriend out for dinner. We didn’t see any Vietnamese dining here, so I guessed it’s a restaurant catering mainly to foreigners.
At night, we continued walking around the downtown area, where symbols of socialism and capitalism met. Both Ho Chi Minh City’s people’s committee and Vincom Center were beautifully lit at night.
We went for a cup of coffee in the famous Coffee Apartments, an old Saigon high-rise edifice transformed into a building of cafes. The place had apparently become so famous that visitors need to pay to take the elevator, so we just took the stairs. The plaza was a vibrant place where local families come to celebrate the weekends, with street artists singing, couples dating, and children playing.
We made a brief stop at Vincom Center before heading back to our hotel, where Wiew bought some nuts and coffee (and more beers) for his families and colleagues (I, on the other hand, didn’t have this habit, which my mom complained soon after I got come). The department store looked like a typical Asian one; its food court included Japanese, Korean and Chinese restaurants I’d seen in other neighboring Asian countries as well.
Just as I thought our first day had come to an end, on our way walking back to the hotel, I saw a nerve-wracking scene: several used syringe needles discarded on the sidewalk (yes you should never walk here with your sandals; it gave me stress seeing other people walking in sandals after seeing this). Under the surface of the burgeoning city lurked less pleasant issues— garbage disposal, drug abuse, and poverty — that the city, whatever it is called, is facing and will continue to face.
Next:
- Ho Chi Minh City D2 — Cu Chi Tunnel
- Ho Chi Minh City D3 — Cho Lon
- Ho Chi Minh City — Taipei Vietnam Airlines VN570 Flight Report
