Tuesday 29th October - Ho Chi Minh City

Had a later start today taking a cab to the former Presidential Palace, designed & built in the 1960s by a French trained local architect. It is a fine building & we had a guided tour in English before viewing a patriotic film about its history & the liberation in 1975. We walked from there to a recommended restaurant where all the food is supplied from stalls around the perimeter & had a range of foods, all pretty good.

After lunch we moved on to the 'War Remnants Museum' but had to wait for it to re-open after lunch. This is a strange collection of memorabilia from the 'American War' with war planes & tanks outside in the front yard. Much of the exhibition is devoted to vilifying the US for its efforts to stop the north unifying the country etc. It was a bit shrill but was also quite moving as the effects particularly of the defoliants & the unexploded bombs & shells were shown in very graphic terms. In the courtyard was a mock up of an island prison of the South Vietnamese regime which showed again how badly the prisoners had been treated. All in all, a sad reflection on a totally useless war. We don’t seem to learn from these experiences!

Back home for a rest before our last day tomorrow in Vietnam.

Wednesday 30th October

Took a cab to Saigon Square, a sort of indoor market off the waterfront as Jane wanted some new golf shoes. It was a waste of time for a couple of reasons: thee stalls all sold very ordinary clothing, shoes, watches & souvenirs etc & there was no air conditioning. We then followed the riverside along until we left it to move back into town as Jane had spotted the Art Museum on our map & after quite a long trek in very trying hot & humid conditions we eventually found it together with its upmarket coffee shop. Here they served the complementary iced tea but this had the most unusual flavour of used cabbage water much to Jane’s disgust. We still don’t know what it was supposed to be.

The museum is housed in a large French colonial building of 3 storeys with a mixture ancient & modern art works from Vietnam & some of the works were truly excellent but unfortunately it is not air conditioned & some of the rooms were very hot & humid which rather weakened our interest in lingering to examine their contents. My favourites were the sketches & pictures by artists in the ‘American War’ but also of interest were some 7th century statues from the Cham period which reminded us of early Egyptian ones.

Leaving the gallery we walked on to a second ‘Saigon Square’ complex but without any luck in our search for the golf shoes.

Then the breakthrough, we found the ‘Saigon Centre’ close by & this was a modern shopping complex but unfortunately the mythical golf shop had closed some time ago, so still no luck. To compensate we had a drink & some food in a western style cafe & convinced ourselves we had found where the expats go to shop.

Returning to the hotel we visited the central market, another warren of stalls selling just about everything, except golf shoes, but nearly expired in the heat there before escaping back to the street. We braved the traffic once more & arrived back to the hotel just before a few sharp showers deluged the area. After an early dinner at 4.30 & a quick shower we took a very slow ride to the airport in the rush hour for our flights home via Singapore.