Vietnam Day 3: Goodnight Saigon

Last day in town, been having an amazing time... Got to cram in our last bit of sightseeing and shopping before flying back to Hong Kong.

Our first order of business after checking out of our hotel was going to the War Remnants Museum, which had been known as the War Crimes Museum but was renamed so as not to offend potential visitors, particularly American tourists.

The museum collects artifacts and other historical evidence (photographs, government documents, contemporary media reports, etc.), with a blatantly slanted view in favor of Vietnamese political propaganda, of Vietnam's conflicts with China, France and the United States.

If I had to give an informal estimate, I would say that roughly 60-70 percent of the exhibits are related to the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, about 20-25 percent focusing on the First Indochinese War (the war against the French), and the rest on its conflicts with the Chinese.

As soon as you walk in the gates, there is a courtyard with several restored American and French military vehicles (jets, helicopters and tanks), and then there are several buildings on the periphery of the courtyard with different exhibits. Pretty grim and depressing stuff.

One exhibit is a collection of war photographs taken by several international photographers who were killed or disappeared while covering the conflicts in Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia. A notebook in the exhibition gives their names and brief biographies of who they were, what news organizations they worked for, and the circumstances of their deaths or disappearances.

The main exhibit hall focuses on the French and American wars. There are several pieces of exploded bomb ordinance and casings, as well as charred remains of clothes and personal items of people whose lives were affected by the attacks. There are sections that focus on Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre as well. The Agent Orange exhibit is easily the most depressing and visually distressing one to see.

There is another section of the exhibit which on former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska) for one mission that he was involved in during the war as a Navy SEAL, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star. Another exhibit shows a replica of the tiger cages, which were developed in a French-run prison. Another major exhibit focuses the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States and around the world.

After that, we headed over to the Jade Emperor pagoda, one of the most famous in the city and in Vietnam.

After the pagoda, we had lunch at a bun restaurant and then headed over to do a tour of the Reunification Palace, which was the South Vietnamese equivalent of the White House up until 1975 when the North took over. The place has been preserved as a museum with a lot of the 60's and 70's era furniture and design still the same. We got to walk through the equivalent of the Oval Office, which must have been a very interesting and very hectic place during the month of April 1975.

One other highlight from the palace worth noting is that when we went up to the roof, we could see the helipad on an adjacent building, which the last South Vietnamese president used to flee the country before the North stormed the gates, as documented in a famous photo. On that same helipad are two large red circles, marking the spots where on February 27, 1962, South Vietnamese air force pilots dropped bombs in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate their own commander in chief, then-president Ngo Dinh Diem.

After finishing up at the palace, we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags, and made our way to the airport to fly back to Hong Kong.

The title of this post is from a Billy Joel song.