day 2 of my soujourn in hcmc continues. today was a day more focused “tourist” day with visits to the reunification palace, the notre dame cathedral, as well as the war remenants museum.
started the day with breakfast at pho 24, which is another numbered pho chain around hcmc – however, i opted for a dish of pork com instead. this was enough different types of pork to be almost filipino.
one of the interesting things about pho 24, was on the placemats they had written the following:
the main ingredient of TAMIFLU for curing the swine flu (H5N1) is shikmic acid, which can be found plenty in star anise. and star anise is the main ingredient of our PHO NOODLE BROTH
click here to read more clearly.
from here, it was on to the reunification palace. the wikipedia article provides a lot more information than i’m willing to type here – but the place seemed quite odd for a governmental building/palace. maybe i’ve been in the states or china too much, but it really felt like a community college building built in the late 60s or 70s. if you attended cal, it really reminded me of barrows hall down to the 1970s furniture.
from there, it was on to the nearby war remnants museum. it was astoundingly powerful, with exhibits featuring torture prison camp conditions, photos of kids with birth defects caused by dioxin and agent orange, photos from atrocities like the my lai massacre. realizing that its quite heavy on the propoganda and anti-us feelings, it still served as a very compelling arguement against war. as a side note i didn’t take any photos there, as i thought it would be disrespectful to anyone who died or was gravely injured as a result of the war, and yet tourists seemed to have zero respect for the dead from either side, climbing up the tanks or taking silly photos inside the museum. it was a little bit digusting so i left.
after lunch, i explored the notre dame cathedral and the main saigon post office, which had this great ho chi minh shot overlooking the main lobby. the post office was beautiful.
tomorrow it’ll be the cu chi tunnels and we’ll see what the afternoon brings.
I went to the reunification palace when I was there a few weeks back, very James Bond supervillain inside what what!
Did you take a look at the comments book in the Agent Orange room of the “Museum of American War Atrocities” (so it was called until recently), pages and pages of people saying how awful it all was and how it should never happen again. Then on one page in enormous spidery writing “The Vietnamese people have suffered but they can still be saved if they can love jesus christ” (WTF??), later there was another comment saying “Room too hot, please consider fitting air conditioning”.
The heavy bakelite plastic phones made it seem as if SPECTRE was right around the corner. The maps were fascinating.
I didn’t look at the comment books, but the room WAS very hot. Er, not that that was anything like giving birth to a dioxin harmed baby, but I did happy to sweat clean through my shirt. After having lived in the Bible Belt (a very enjoyable 4 years) I am totally unsurprised by church related seeming non-sequiturs.