Granted, my limited time restricted my explorations to just a couple of the city’s main districts and a couple of key sights which may not have provided the most rounded view of the city. Plus, HCMC’s place on the schedule of my tour of Vietnam may have also contributed as it was hard to accept the city’s urban chaos compared to the last ten days spent amid Hoi An’s rural wonders and Hanoi’s old world grandeur. But, I did make a concerted effort to explore a rather extensive amount of the city’s most well-trodden areas to give me a good enough sense to confidently form an opinion of it.
Unfortunately, most of that opinion is not overly positive. HCMC is congested, dirty, polluted, noisy, confusing, smoggy, overcrowded, overwhelming and chaotic. It smells too. Homes, store fronts and just about everything else are jammed tightly into narrow, unsightly streets adorned with seemingly hundreds of telephone and electrical wires hanging haphazardly from rickety poles. The streets are packed with swift moving motorbikes with obvious contempt for pedestrian obstacles. It would be a bit overstated to say the streets are laid out in anything resembling a grid and attractive, tree-lined avenues seem to be a monopoly reserved solely for Saigon’s capital neighbor to the north, Hanoi.
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| From Ho Chi Minh C... |
Even the people, usually the redeeming quality to any location I’ve found not to my liking, seemed a bit disgruntled and irritable. Not that they don’t have good cause to be so. Having been on essentially the losing end of a civil war (i.e. the Vietnam War), the people of South Vietnam evidently still endure some prejudices and hardships from their northerly brethren as a residual effect of the war’s ultimate outcome. While that seems to be fading for the most part after a couple of generations separation from that turbulent period, that could be the cause for the slight cynicism I sensed in HCMC.
Time constraints and cynical citizens aside, I still found more than a few things to do and explore during my thirty-six or so hours in HCMC. Most of it revolved around the city’s District 1, still known as Saigon, which serves as the main tourist area. It’s centered around Dong Khoi road which is built up in a slightly more attractive manner than the other districts of central HCMC. It contains a shady lane or two with a couple of outdoor cafes and restaurants, doing it’s best to provide an attractive oasis for foreigners and locals alike. The area is also home to a couple of upscale department stores that seem slightly out of place compared to the rest of the city, but seem to do a moderate business nonetheless. A couple of holdovers from Vietnam’s turn as a French colony also provided some noteworthy attractions. The attractive Notre Dame Cathedral sits smack in the middle of a section of Dong Khoi road and the equally attractive Post Office is just across the street, both constructed in a classic French colonial style.
The two main sights where I spent the most time, however, related to the Vietnam War (known to the Vietnamese as the American War). The Reunification Palace and War Remnant’s Museum are a couple of HCMC’s main attractions. Luckily, they seem to be among a dwindling number of war-related attractions around the country as our two countries resumed conciliatory relations well over a decade ago. But, I was intrigued to see a bit of history on display and perhaps glean some insight into how the Vietnamese view the war decades later. I’ll also admit I did so with a slight bit of apprehension as to what that might turn up.
The Reunification Palace has gone under a couple of names that seem to match it’s equal number of edifices. The site was originally home to a French built palace that housed the French governor who ruled the colony then known as Indochina which comprised Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia at the time. When the French left, the new prime minister of South Vietnam claimed the palace, but when he was assassinated about ten years later (1962), the palace was leveled. In it’s place arose the current building which looks more like a 1960’s corporate headquarters than it does a palace. It was called Independence Palace, a moniker meant as much for independence from the North (and communism) as from the French. It was (in)famously captured by the North on April 30, 1975 - better know as the Fall of Saigon - amd thereafter called Reunification Palace.
A tour of the palace is interesting enough although not entirely remarkable. I whisked through three floors of presidential offices, meeting rooms, conference rooms, dining rooms and even a gambling room. Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour I found was the well-preserved sixties-era design and furniture that served to provide an eerie feel of being back in the sixties in the middle of the war. Enhancing that feeling were the more interesting finds in the basement and on the roof terrace. The roof sported its own U.S.-built Huey helicopter - which I find to be one of the war's emblematic icons - which the North‘s conquering president used to fly around the country post-war. The basement consisted of what was essentially a war bunker complete with multiple war rooms with large maps on the walls depicting which territories belonged to which side and indicating strategic initiatives. Leading from the main war rooms was a dark, dank, ominous hallway that stretched the length of the palace and was packed with tiny rooms dedicated to every imaginable form of communication from high-frequency radio to field radios to tele-type. It’s a far cry, I would imagine, to what’s likely located below the U.S. White House, but it was still very intriguing to get a glimpse into anything of a remotely similar nature in a former presidential residence.
Back outside was a display of a couple of Russian made tanks which were key parts of the Viet Cong arsenal in its efforts against the South Vietnamese and United States. From the front steps, the way the display tanks are positioned, it was easy to imagine similar tanks crashing through the palace gates in late April forty-one years ago as the North raced into Saigon to claim ultimate victory. I’d be willing to bet that’s not a coincidence.
Reunification Palace served mostly as a place of interest for its role as a headquarters for the South and was for the most part devoid of anything referencing the actual battles of the war. The War Remnants Museum, however, was significantly less restrained in that regard as the very name might indicate. The museum is meant to depict the ravages of war and oppression that Vietnam has endured over the last century or so. While it makes a faint effort to loop France and South Vietnam’s first prime minister (Ngo Dinh Diem), who the North evidently views as a vile dictator - my own knowledge of the subject, from either perspective, is non-existent- the vast majority of the museum focuses on the Vietnam (American) War. In fact, it could almost be called the American War Remnants Museum because it’s almost entirely made up of exhibits - including a display of war planes, machinery and weaponry made up solely of captured U.S. Army items -depicting the United States’ role in the war with not so subtle inferences to America essentially being a diabolical perpetrator of a multitude of egregious wrongs against Vietnam.
I reminded myself that I was in Vietnam, home to essentially the winning side, and I understood that the war would likely be portrayed in manner different from what I'd long experienced stateside. But, it was done in such a heavy-handed way that it seemed to erode a bit of the impact from the otherwise captivating displays. It also made the tour a bit disconcerting and uneasy, but perhaps rightly so. Also likely was that my own patriotism was silently rising as a shield attempting to deflect criticism as I made my way through the museum.
But, one exhibit did serve to leave a resounding impact regardless of any overall bias. ‘Requiem’, as the exhibit was called, was a collection of starling, often unnerving, photographs and news articles that showcased the devastating effects of the multitude of guns, grenades, mines and bombs on innocent bystanders. In particular, the exhibit gave significant focus to the effects of napalm and phosphorous on soldiers and citizens alike. The subjects of the collection of disturbing images were those who had lost limbs, been disfigured or burned, or suffered birth defects due to their parents exposure to substances like napalm and phosphorous when military ordinance found its way into the path of those caught in the middle of a brutal war. It was a glaring reminder that war is a losing proposition for all involved.
Most of a day spent touring through monuments to war certainly didn’t serve to bolster my feelings about HCMC. But, perhaps its that very war that’s affected HCMC more than any other city in Vietnam and it’s just trying to get by as best it’s can as it digs out from its past. Still, one would hope that as Vietnam begins to embrace economic reform and seeks to revive its stagnant economy that HCMC will begin to transform its self from the seedy, chaotic metropolis that it is today into Vietnam’s most vibrant, alluring city which it certainly could, for all it foibles, be capable of doing. It would be good not only for visiting tourists, but maybe even more so for the locals who inhabit its chaotic confines on a daily basis.
HO CHI MINH CITY PHOTO ALBUM (click photo):
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| Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) '07 |
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