1) Vietnam History Museum ($2)
2) The Zoo ($0.50)
3) The Reunification Palace ($1)
4) The War Remnants Museum ($2)
VIETNAM HISTORY MUSEUM:
The Vietnamese Museum was pretty nice as far as Asian museums go. It's hard to spend a lot of time in a museum where the captions and descriptive texts are in very limited and broken English. They had some very nice sculptures from Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which got me excited for our travels there next week. The zoo was next door so I had a quick look. It was in a park setting & some of the animals looked a bit neglected, including 4 elephants, giraffes, and lots of crocodiles. At 50 cents admission, it's no surprise. I bought a bunch of sugarcane stalks from an old lady and fed the elephants for a bit, which seemed to get them excited for a bit.
REUNIFICATION PALACE:
A $1 motorbike taxi got me across town to the Reunification Palace, which was the former headquarters of the US Military during the war. The top floor is just a lobby, conference room, dining room, and meeting room. Down below in the basement is where it really gets interesting. It's more like the catacombs of a modern church; a few dozen small rooms dedicated to communications, offices, and "war" rooms for those in charge. Many areas were off limits. A lot of communication and electrical equipment left behind was on display. Maps of Vietnam were everywhere, all marked up with information on zones, radio channels, resistance pockets, etc. I the basement they also show a repeating video documentary that is laughable propaganda to the point of being mildly entertaining.
WAR REMNANTS MUSEUM:
A short ways to the North of the palace is the War Remnants Museum, which displays tons of US, French, and Vietnamese military heavy equipment. The bias against the French & Americans was laughable at times and often ill-conceived contradictory statements were made. For instance, one wall displays proudly groups of women and children with AK-47's taking up arms against the "oppressors". The next wall is a photographic collage accusing the French and American war criminals of murdering women and children. There was though, a lot of damning evidence in support of French and American "war crimes". The most interesting section displayed photos, letters, articles, and bios of some of the 150 international journalists killed in action during the war. I highly doubt many of the letters would ever make it into a US museum, given how negatively they portrayed the average American soldier. One such article showed a few smiling soldiers holding up decapitated heads of VC soldiers, or another showed piles of women and children that had been shot or napalmed. Overall, it was interesting to see the other side of the war, however biased.
By 5pm, I was pretty burnt out. For the next 4hrs, Chris was one step behind me, trying to track me down. I must have stopped by his hotel room 3 times, each time being told he had left 5 minutes before. I can't remember how I ever met up with people before cell phones. I had dinner at a very popular locals place about a block from the Reunification Palace called Ngon. There was a line out the door of 20 people. I loaded up on several local dishes and even took some food back for later. Chris and I finally caught up with each other after leaving several notes at his guest house, which was a 5min walk from mine. We intended to have a fun night out in Saigon, which has a reputation for great nightlife. As it turns out, my guest house was run by a family that locks the main door at midnight and past then, you are not getting in. We were both tired so we made it an early night.
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