There are function rooms, restaurants, and ballroom on the first floor.
I see a lot of slot machines!
We took the hotel van and headed for the Reunification Palace (or the Independence Palace). Haha look at their colourful face masks.
It's a rare thing to have lots of greenery in the middle of a city.
Few minutes later, we arrived at the grand entrance.
Opposite the palace is 30-4 Park.
The Reunification Palace was designed for South Vietnam's former president Ngo Dinh Diem during the American War. The official handover of power took place right here on 30 April 1975, and the palace has since then become a monument to that historic date. It's a MUST to come here when you're in HCMC!
The palace is open daily from 7.30am to 11am and from 1pm to 4pm. Admission is VND30,000.
There are two of these original Russian T-54 tanks on display along the walkway.
This woman greeted the visitors with a friendly smile. Free tour guides are available with English-speaking guides and they can be arranged in the lobby.
The palace has a total of four floors, including a basement and a rooftop. The ground floor is filled with meeting rooms.
The back garden.
The chairs look like the ones used during the ancient times of China. I felt very surreal sitting on one of them lol.
The window panes along the corridor. It's quite easy to jump off I would say, haha!
There are a number of grand reception rooms here on the first floor.
Go up to the second floor, and you'll see all these!
A small courtyard.
They even have a mini theatre!
The games room hahaha.
A really, really old grand piano. I would love to feel the keys.
Look outside from this corridor and you'll see a UH-1 helicopter model made in the US - the sign says that it is a copy of the one that the president of the Republic of Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu used on tours of inspection before 1975. By the way, this place was once used as a helipad for evacuating staff before the palace got attacked during the war.
We went up to the rooftop for a brief look, as there was nothing much to see.
The red words say (left in English, right in Vietnamese), "At 8:30am April 8th 1975 first lieutenant pilot Nguyen Thanh Trung flew FSE and threw down two bombs at the right target here."
I went down to the basement alone because my parents and sister were too tired and/or lazy to walk anymore (-.-). I only found out that the palace has a basement when I saw arrows pointing down and signs that say "basement". Thank goodness I didn't miss it, because I got to see a lot of old, valuable equipment that I have never seen before in my life! The trip to the basement was really interesting. and it's probably safe to say that it's the highlight of this place :D
However, it would be great if there were less people down there because the corridors are really narrow - so there was a lot of stopping and giving way to people. A crowd is also not a good idea as there will be a lack of oxygen! Furthermore, the corridors are not too brightly lit and the whole basement is like a huge maze so you might want to keep an eye out for the younger ones so they wouldn't get lost.
This is the projection room *squeals* so cool!
Old radio equipment.
Huge maps of Vietnam in the president's war room.
Coffee urn :O
Asdfghjkl a real dumb waiter! Okay I got excessively excited when I saw this because I'm always reading about dumb waiters in books and never got to see one :D
They even have an ice-cream maker hahaha.
Ice-cream stocker.
They also have a cocktail sink!
A really huge-ass mixer. Wow.
A baking oven.
I went out of the kitchen and headed in the opposite direction.
The sign there says, "This is a replica of the original jeep car which took the president of the Republic of Vietnam Duong Van Minh from the Independence Palace to the Saigon radio station, where he declared the surrender to the revolutionary government at noon on April 30, 1975.
It is offered by the Ministry of Defence on the 63rd anniversary of the Vietnamese army (Dec 22, 1944 - Dec 22, 2007)."
"A Mercedes car - one of the cars used by the president of the Republic of Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu.
The 1 Corps, 390 Division, 48 Regiment seized it at 9:10am on April 30, 1975 from the general headquarters of the Republic of Vietnam."
Towards the end of the basement, there are rooms where you can watch videos about the history of the palace. Each room has a different language. Oh and they are air-conditioned by the way, so some people go in just to enjoy the cool air lol (the basement is really quite stuffy).
A shooting range!! Again, I was super excited as it was my first time seeing one with my own eyes (doesn't matter if it's old!).
The soldiers' mouth is the bullseye HAHA.
Having finished touring the basement, I kinda got lost trying to find my way out. Every corner looks similar and there are no signs along the corridor to guide you out. Plus the fact that I was alone in an eerie place did not help at all. I started to freak out (a little) and then realised that I might be a bit claustrophobic. Thank God I managed to find my way in the end - took me quite a while but at least I was finally out in the open - phew!
The next place I wanted to go was the War Remnants Museum (there are seven museums in HCMC alone, might be more - and that's a lot to have in one city!). It sounds quite interesting - even the guide booklet says "this museum is not for the fainthearted". Okayyyy but my curiosity was greater than my apprehension!
So we walked from the palace to the museum. It wasn't very easy to find even with a map, but maybe it's just me and my family lol. We spotted cute pups along the way! *heart is jumping* But I pity them though :(
Passed by some fancy buildings too.
The War Remnants Museum is located comfortably among shop houses so that explains why it might be easy to miss. We were walking along the road when suddenly we noticed the museum just opposite us. This is not the main entrance!
We wanted to buy tickets but the lady at the counter told us that they were about to close for lunch. I was a bit disappointed, since we walked all the way here. So anyway we decided to go around the building and take a look from the outside.
Gruesome photos of war victims were displayed along the fence of the museum... I was horrified by the photos and I started to contemplate if I should really go in or not (since I'm the person who do not watch any horror movies at all).
But then I saw these really cool war vehicles and I wanted to have a closer look!! And touch them too.
We came to the main entrance. The museum is open from 7.30am to noon and from 1.30pm to 5.30pm. It is closed on weekends and admission is VND15,000. A local tip: Visit the Cu Chi Tunnels first to get a better understanding of the military tactics used.
(The Cu Chi Tunnels is a 90-minutes bus ride from HCMC, and has a network of underground tunnels form the 1940s expanded by guerrilla Viet Cong forces during the American War. There is a firing range on site where you can fire AK47s and M16s!!!!!)
The War Remnants Museum was established in 1975 and is home to various US armoured vehicles, bombs, and infantry weapons. Not forgetting provocative images detailing the brutality of the war.
I didn't know how we managed to get in without getting tickets but umm, we did. Somehow. I think they were preparing to close anyway so they weren't really bothered by new visitors? Or perhaps we blend in well with the existing visitors and they didn't notice. Hehe anyway we got in for free :D
I was like, touching all the cool stuff they have here HAHA.
There was a meeting with the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange two days ago, right here in this place!
A brief history about Agent Orange (sounds cool but it's actually very horrible), taken from Wikipedia: It is one of the herbicides used by the US military during the Vietnam War (1961-1971) to defoliate the agricultural land so that the guerrillas wouldn't have enough shelter and food. It was estimated that 400,000 people were killed or maimed during that time, and 500,000 children were born with birth defects.
It's really sad D:
These are real letters written by the martyrs to their families in 1968.
One of the translated letters written by a martyr to his wife. I felt like crying after reading this. I wonder if she received the letter, if she wrote back to him, if he got her letter, if they were reunited in the end?
Photographs of what happened during and after the war.
I guess this room serves as a tribute to the Agent Orange victims. Photos of deformed babies and adults are put up to remind people of the cruelty during the war *shudders*
I went out and boy, I was stunned to see such a giant bomb laying there! Actually, I was amazed to see SO MANY bombs all at once. The biggest bomb here is called the BLU-82 siesmic bomb. It's 3.35 metres long, 1.37 metres wide and weighs 5,700 kg. When it explodes, it will destroy an area within a 100 metre radius and cause serious damage within a diameter of 3.2 km :O
Next, we went to Bình Tây Market, the central market of Chợ Lớn - the Chinese district in HCMC - located in District 6 (all the places that we went to previously are all in District 1, the central urban district of HCMC). District 6 is quite a distance away from District 1 so we decided to take a taxi.
Before coming to HCMC, I did my research and found that taxi companies such as Mai Linh and Vinasun are some of the trustworthy ones as they charge according to metres - therefore the rate is reasonable. It's actually quite cheap to take a taxi here, provided you take the ones by reputable companies. Otherwise, there are a lot of taxi scams and tourists are usually the targets. Taxis here are mostly Toyota Vios and Toyota Innova, so rides are generally comfortable.
When we walked out of the museum, there weren't any Mai Linh or Vinasun taxis in sight. However, there were a few taxis from other companies. I told my dad that it might not be a good idea to take those taxis but he kept saying "never mind, it's okay". Sigh. So we went into one of those taxis while my suspicion was slowly growing.
The ride was about half an hour if I'm not mistaken. The driver was (extra) friendly, which made me even more suspicious but I also felt guilty because what if he's just being friendly and I only think of him as a dishonest person. But there was somehow a gut feeling telling me that something's not right. Also, I kept noticing the metre and the numbers were increasing at a suspiciously fast rate...
We arrived at our destination and the amount of money that we paid was a bit too much, I thought. Somehow the long distance didn't seem to justify the amount of money. (We took a Vinasun taxi back and the rate was much, much cheaper and the distance was nearer as well!) Apparently we got cheated a second time -.-" Anyway, the taxi driver said that he'll wait for us at a specific place and told us to look for him when we're done. Right...
As you can see, Bình Tây Market has a mix of French and Chinese architecture (more Chinese I suppose) and it's the largest market in town, spanning four blocks. Built in 1928, the building is well-known for its reddish-brown tiles and dominant yellow clock tower. It's not as commercialised as Bến Thành Market therefore the goods here are cheaper. However, the market seems very run-down and disorganised compared to Bến Thành Market.
Here comes the scary part: So we were walking around, and then suddenly we noticed that the taxi driver was following behind us! He was trailing quite closely and it was freaking me out a bit. My parents asked him (a few times) to wait outside and "assured" him that we'll look for him after we're done. But he kept on walking behind us oh my gosh at this point of time I was really freaking out.
I told my parents to walk faster and turn at every corner to throw him off (WHAT THE HECK I felt like I was in a movie!!). After a while he wasn't behind us anymore and was nowhere in sight. It's like he suddenly disappeared. My mom said perhaps he went to wait at the foot of the staircase (as we were on the second floor) so he wouldn't miss us when we come down. Uhh okayy...
But as long as he isn't following us wherever we go, because that is really scary. I guess we can avoid him when we go down later!
There's a small garden in the middle of the market.
Cute face masks made of cloth!
We stopped to buy some fried cempedak snacks (...and momentarily forgot about that scary guy).
We got lost trying to find our way out. There are a few entrances but we wanted to find the main entrance that we went in from. It was not a nice feeling going from one end of the market to the other end while fearing that we might bump into that guy.
After we finally found the main entrance, we stood outside thinking where and what to eat (which was so dangerous because that guy might see us but thank God he didn't!). We saw KFC opposite on the first floor of a building and decided to go there - despite initial objections from mom - since I was getting really hungry and there didn't seem to have other restaurants nearby. We didn't see the guy so we thought he went off already!
This stall right below KFC was selling some refreshing tong sui, or drinks - perfect for such a hot day - so we bought a cup. It was delicious; a real threat for our throats!
The ingredients are kept cold.
This KFC looks very old-fashioned haha! It was crowded with foreigners when we went in.
When we were done with our food, suddenly my mom saw THAT GUY lingering in front of the market! Our table was near a glass door (that leads to a balcony) and since my mom was facing the door, she could easily see what's happening down there. I salute her because there were so many people walking about and she could spot him lol. Oh my goodness, I think he was waiting for us all this while! Wth I feel trapped -.-
We didn't dare to go down for fear that he might see us and force us to get into his taxi (actually just me and my sister getting all paranoid). He seemed like he was waiting for us as he was standing there, sometimes walking about, while he kept looking in the direction of the market entrance. Sometimes he would go up to a fellow taxi driver (same uniform so I guessed), talk to him for a bit while pointing towards the entrance, and go back to his usual waiting place. I assumed that he was asking about us........
We kept observing him while planning our escape route - I know I sound dramatic but it was really THAT intense! This kind of situation only happens in movies (right?!), so it was half exciting and half scary to get involved in something like this in real life!! Ermahgerd we couldn't do anything but wait and wait and wait. If worst comes to worst - if he doesn't leave anytime soon - we planned to go down, walk in the opposite direction and quickly hail a (legit) taxi. We couldn't spend one whole afternoon waiting for him to leave right, and we had to check out of the hotel after lunch time anyway.
But thank God! He left after a while! Well, it looked like it since we saw him walking towards the direction of his car. After waiting for a little more longer (to make sure!), we went down, and thankfully there were a number of Vinasun taxis waiting there so we hopped into one as fast as possible.
WOWOWOW what an experience that was! I will forever remember this chi gek moment LOL. After reaching the hotel safely, we packed our things and headed for the airport. Dark, looming clouds suddenly appear when we were checking in - such unpredictable weather.
Despite all the scamming, my Vietnam trip was overall a pleasant one, and I hope to come back again! I want to visit Hanoi next time. For those of you planning to come to HCMC, I suggest that four days is enough for you to see every popular attraction, eat most types of Vietnamese food, and basically have a relaxing time.
It's really easy to go around town, which is District 1, on foot. You'll need a map of course. It's much more exciting to explore the city on your own without having to follow a tour, which is not necessary, really. As all the attractions in town are nearby each other, it would be a better idea to stay at a hotel in the city centre, such as Rex Hotel or Hotel Continental Saigon, so you can easily walk from one place to another :)
