Southern Women's Museum | HCMC, Vietnam

The Southern Women's Museum is a no-go, in my opinion. It's made up of two buildings; as of 2023, the main building has been closed for construction for years and the annex is severely mold damaged and reeks, and I'm not sure if that's being addressed properly. The villa next door is also under very loud construction.

As for the content of the museum, it was incredibly, unexpectedly, one-sided, entirely focused on communist activists operating in Saigon and other Southern cities. It was also totally unconsidered; the tone was very much homage rather than historical examination. The artifacts were sparse.

You can visit in 20 minutes, but in my opinion you should only bother doing so if you happen to be within a 2-block radius; definitely don't make a special trip for this. If you want to visit a women’s museum in Vietnam, make time to see the museum in Hanoi.

Quang Trieu Assembly Hall (Hội Quán Quảng Triệu) | HCMC, Vietnam

Originally built in 1887 by immigrants from Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, this assembly hall was partially destroyed by fire in 1920 but rebuilt totally by 1922. It is particularly notable for the enameled porcelain figurines, made from Cay Mai pottery and products of Thach Loan - My Ngoc glazed ceramics.

Thien Hau Thanh Mau is the central goddess here; on either side are Kim Hoa Niang (Kim Hoa Thanh Mau) and Long Mau Nun. Many other gods are worshipped here, including Bac De (Chon Vo), Van Xuong De Quan , Quan Am Bodhisattva , Ngoc Hoang , Quan Thanh De Quan , Tai Bach Tinh Quan , and Cuu Thien Huyen Nu.

If you wish to witness a religious holiday here, there are ceremonies on January 1st, 9th and the lunar new year; March 23rd, April 17th, May 8th, June 24th and July 22nd.

Saigon Dinner Cruise: The Oriental Pearl | HCMC, Vietnam

I was really excited to try a dinner cruise down the Saigon river. It seemed like an old-fashioned luxury. I saw the Elisa from the balcony of the Ho Chi Minh Port Museum and thought, what an interesting old wooden junk, I’ll try that one! I later found out that the Elisa is too large to sail, so it’s just permanently docked as a restaurant boat. There are many dinner cruises, but I wanted one of the old wooden boats, and the Oriental Pearl was the nicest one running.

It’s not expensive; it seems like locals can get tickets for $16 but any non-Vietnamese gets charged about $10 more. For the money, the food is sufficient, but not good. There’s a Western menu and an Asian menu; I chose the Asian menu, which ended up being two oysters, two fried chicken drums, bland fried rice in a pineapple, a fried crab roll and glass noodles with a couple shrimp. Drinks, including water, are extra. The cocktails are weak, and the boat is extremely hot, even with the fans on, even in December. The views are, frankly, ugly, with mostly 2000s and 2010s poorly lit office buildings all along the shore at first; further out, there’s just no lights, nothing.

If those were all my gripes, it would just be a neutral experience I wouldn’t choose again. However, I couldn’t wait to get off the boat for two other reasons I hate Vietnam for in general: chainsmokers and noise pollution. Everyone is allowed to smoke everywhere on the boat, and they do. I’m allergic to cigarette smoke and people in Vietnam act like it’s 1990 and it’s all in my head, maintaining a disgusting attitude as well as a disgusting vice. Wake up, it’s 2023 and you’re in a public health crisis! The Western world banned this 20 years ago.

As for noise, they have different musical entertainment on each section of the ship- the rear dining room, center dining room, lower dining room, and upper deck. There are no walls between the spaces. So 4 different live bands or sound systems playing at the same time, all night, and you can hear all of them, loud and clear. The level of noise pollution in Vietnam in general is also a serious problem; even local karaoke places think it’s cool to jack the volume up to decibel levels literally considered torture by the CIA, and the strategy on this boat was no different. They actually had a charming traditional music troupe rotating through the spaces, and it makes me genuinely sad to know their talents are wasted here night after night.

Lastly, the crowd was fine in the center dining room, mostly couples on dates and tourists, but a bit trashy elsewhere. The rear dining room was taken up by some sort of corporate party where they were drinking to the point of bad behavior, and the lower dining room was dedicated to the occupants of two giant Chinese tour buses also getting really wild. Fun for them, not so much for the smaller parties onboard.

Well, yolo. It was on my list, I tried it. Traveling isn’t perfect!

The History Museum and Hung King Temple, HCMC | Vietnam

After fruitless hours searching for the elusive “Mr. Rivera”, the supposed French architect of the Hui Bon Hoa complex, I was surprised to find the life and career of Auguste Delaval, architect of the HCMC History Museum, so thoroughly attested and accessible. His many prize-winning watercolors and gouaches of Indochina are held in his hometown museum in Hennebont, France; scans of his transcript at the École des Beaux-Arts are a simple google search away.

The History Museum and the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang are the two buildings outside France that Delaval remains known for today; the history museum, built between 1926 and 1929, is undoubtedly his best extant building. He was among the clique of architects typically competing for Indochinese colonial commissions, including Vildieu, Moncet, Bussy, and Hébrard. He submitted designs for lots of institutional jobs he didn’t get; the Dalat train station, for example, went to Moncet. Each firm had a side business in privately owned luxury villas, since they knew how to build in Indochina; most of the current non-French, non-original owners of these buildings have no idea who their architect was.

Incidentally, I think that’s what happening with the Hui-Bon-Hoa property: Given their differing styles, I think each building was actually built by a different architect, perhaps even from old or previously incomplete plans. For example, I can’t find any Beaux-Arts graduate named Rivera, but the first building constructed (originally the company office, currently the building on the left when you walk through the gate) looks like the work of Gustave Rives, the go-to man for classy Parisian apartment buildings, museums, and townhouses at the time of Hui Bon Hua senior’s death in 1901. If I was the richest man in Saigon, a rental real estate magnate, and a naturalized French citizen, that’s certainly who I would choose.

But back to Delaval and the history museum! It was his last institutional building in Indochina; he designed both the main museum building and the adjacent Hung King temple. If it seems odd to you that a Frenchman would be tasked with designing a Hung King temple, you are right: it was originally the Temple du Souvenir Annamite, built to honor the 12000+ Indochinese colonial troops who gave their lives for France in World War 1. It was paid for by public subscription of wealthy Vietnamese, but rededicated nonetheless after the French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1955 (a tasteless act of erasure, in my opinion). The bronze elephant in the adjoining garden has nothing to do with the zoo next door; it was a gift made in 1930 by the Thai King Rama VII to symbolize the troops never being forgotten.

The museum itself is a jewel box. Though the façade is grand, the museum is small, and the interior of the building has an intimate quality; the rooms aren’t overly large, but have very high ceilings with overhead windows or vents. The museum covers the entire history of Vietnam, from prehistory to the current era. It has only a few examples pertaining to each important theme or period, but each example is the absolute best. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the Buddhist relics, ethnic costumes, and Cham and Óc Eo sculptures. It also inexplicably houses an ancient mummy and a second-rate collection of antiques left by a local collector and prolific author on the topic.

As for the temple, it’s been locked for two years now due to Covid; my videos are peeking through the door slats. I was impressed by how totally authentic the materials, construction, and decorative workmanship are: undoubtedly made for and by Vietnamese people. The mark of the French architect is solely in the proportions: it is a cube rather than a long, low, building, with lots of daylight coming in through openwork friezes just below the roof. Relative to old, totally Vietnamese temples, it feels very tall and flat; the columns are more slender, the carvings more shallow.

The proportions and decorative motifs remind me strongly of Emperor Khải Định‘s tomb in Huế, which began construction in 1925 and finished in 1931, concurrent with the museum. It’s quite possible Delaval had an unacknowledged hand in that tomb’s architecture: thought it’s current Vietnamese practice to deny credit to French architects and artisans wherever possible, the tomb is widely admitted to be inspired by the Emperor’s visit to the 1922 Colonial Exhibition in Marseilles, at which Delaval’s scale model of Angkor Wat was the star exhibit. Delaval also had many watercolors of Indochinese architecture, both native and colonial, shown there; he was commissioned by the French colonial government to design this history museum and adjoining (now destroyed) art galleries as a result. It’s not too much of a stretch to think the Francophile emperor hired him to design or collaborate on his biggest commission as well.

If you wish to plan your trip on a tight schedule, the museum website is rather detailed and helpful. However, it shouldn’t take more than two hours to thoroughly review the entire collection. I recommend visiting the museum in the morning before your attention wanes, and visiting the zoo afterwards. Also, be prepared to feel a bit miserable: there is no air conditioning, there are lots of mosquitoes, and the adjoining cafe is cash-only and allows smoking. Admission costs less than $2.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts | HCMC, Vietnam

Huang Wen Hua 黃文華 was born in 1845 in Fujian province, China. He moved to Vietnam at the age of 18, following the 1860 Treaty of Peking, which allowed Chinese citizens to seek employment overseas. By the time he moved in 1863, Vietnam was freshly colonized by the French and consequently seen as full of business opportunities and relatively safe for Chinese immigrants.

The French privileged these Chinese immigrants over native Vietnamese within their corvee system; between 1870 and 1890 over 20,000 Chinese (mostly single men) moved to Cholon alone, creating the largest Chinatown in the world at that time. In just one generation, a merchant class of wealthy, pro-French, relatively unassimilated Sino-Vietnamese elites was created that held economic control of the south until reunification in 1975.

Huang first changed his name to the rather more Vietnamese Huỳnh Văn Hua, but soon realized it would behoove him to convert to Catholicism and use a French baptismal name. He finally ended as Jean-Baptiste Hui Bon Hoa; Hui Bon Hoa being not only an approximate transliteration of his name as pronounced in his native Hokkien dialect, but homophonous for the French “oui, bon Hoa”. His name taken as a whole, in English, reads: John the Baptist yes good Hoa (Hoa meaning people of Sino-Vietnamese descent).

He became the richest man in Saigon during his lifetime, but still visited China frequently, passing away there suddenly in 1901. He built his business from a single pawnshop opened in partnership with a former French employer to a property development empire; he was known to have owned 30,000 shophouses, as well as hotels, banks, hospitals, etc. His unrealized dream was to build the grandest villa in Saigon, a French style mansion large enough for all of his children and grandchildren to live together. In 1929, his three sons decided to start building the dream; before it was completed in 1934 two of them had also passed away.

Over time, successive generations were educated overseas and emigrated. These descendants still live in France and America today, using Hui-Bon-Hua as their surname. By 1967, the house was seized by the South Vietnamese government. All members of the Hui-Bon-Hua family left before the end of the Vietnam war, and in 1987 the three buildings were officially “donated” for use as an art museum, which opened in 1992.

The art here is solely Vietnamese. There are the requisite displays of Cham and Óc Eo artifacts, plus traditional Vietnamese styles like monumental lacquer paintings and paintings on silk. The most famous artists in Vietnam are shown here, as well as artists in the Vietnamese diaspora. I have zero knowledge of Vietnamese art or artists, and found the works of Lê Thị Kim Bạch, Trần Việt Sơn, Huỳnh Quốc Trọng, and Nguyễn Minh Quân compelling.

As in Hanoi there are umpteen war pictures, yet not a single one depicts an ARVN flag, despite this being the South. Money is too new in Vietnam for there to be any grand patrons of the arts just yet . . . if there are any Picassos or Chenghua porcelains in Vietnam, they are in private homes.

The museum doesn’t take more than a day to explore fully. I wish there was an onsite cafe, but I survived. I’d also advise against buying anything on nearby Antique Street, it’s all fake. If you want to buy an authentic work, there’s a selection of antique porcelain and some lithographs and watercolors in the museum’s ground floor gallery. They also have the best selection of books on Vietnamese art and artists that I’ve come across.

Jade Emperor Pagoda, HCMC | Vietnam

Though Buddhism took off in Vietnam during the 3rd century BC, and is still the largest organized religion in the country, Taoism and the concept of the Jade Emperor entered Vietnam between three and four hundred years later (during Chinese occupation) and have become an integral part of Vietnamese folk religion.

In Chinese mythology, the Jade Emperor is the closest thing to what monotheistic Westerners would identify as God: the omnipotent ruler of heaven and earth, the precipitator of destiny and creator of life. Unlike in Western religion, the Jade Emperor has a backstory: it took him approximately 3.3 million years and several reincarnations to evolve from an untalented but benevolent local prince into a god, and an additional 9 trillion years spent fighting off evil to establish himself as the supreme god-king, ruling over the three realms (Heaven, Water, Hell).

Saigon’s Jade Emperor Pagoda was built in 1909 by the local Cantonese congregation. Though it’s on the opposite end of town from Cholon, it is right on the water, opposite the Nha Rong port; it was positioned to cater to a community actively involved in that era’s merchant trade. This temple is more famous than other temples constructed by 18th and 19th century Chinese immigrants, and I honestly can’t discern why. Yes, it has lovely woodwork, but so do others. I believe it is so popular due to the money ritual: supposedly giving a small donation to the City God, then rubbing his hand with red paper, will cause him to give the money back to you many times over.

The Jade Emperor’s birthday is the 9th day of the lunar year, so if you want to see monks and congregants in traditional dress kowtowing and chanting, that’s the best day to visit.

Pagoda Hopping in Cholon: Part 2, HCMC | Vietnam

Fifty years later, the Qing officially permitted the emigration of Chinese as per the first Treaty of Peking; additional tens of thousands moved to Cholon without giving up their Chinese nationality. Privileged over the native Vietnamese in the new French colonial system, these immigrants were typically single men who married local women, building the existing Sino-Vietnamese merchant class into an economic elite that dominated the finances of the South until reunification in 1975.

That’s one of the reasons the names for these places can be so confusing; they not only have a Chinese name and Vietnamese name, but are interchangeably called a guildhall, temple, assembly hall, pavillion, or pagoda. In China, these would be separate institutions within a community; in Cholon, the assembly halls are one stop shops, with most not more than a five minute walk from the next.

4. Ong Bon Pagoda - Nhi Phu Temple, 1765

(also known as Er Fu temple, Chauzhou Guild Hall and Sheng Mu temple)

Ni Phu (two cities) assembly hall was built by Hokkien immigrants from Xuanzhou and Zhangzhou. This is the only temple in Cholon where Ong Ban, the god of the soil, is worshipped. The best days to visit are the last day of the lunar year, and the second day of the new lunar year. On these days, traditional Nanyin music is performed on vintage instruments.

Next door is a high school built in the French colonial era that still teaches Chinese language classes; various Chinese dialects and standard Mandarin are still commonly spoken in Cholon, and the Chinese minority population here is still considered somewhat privileged and unassimilated. That said, the Hokkien worshippers at this pagoda are minorities even among the ethnic Chinese of Cholon, most of whom are Cantonese or Teochew.

5. Ming Dynasty Ancestors Village Hall, 1789

This temple is only open between 8:00 and 12:00 on weekdays, because there’s an elderly caretaker/tour guide (Mme. Vuong) who speaks English well, and this is when she prefers to volunteer. A lifelong worshipper here, she explains the history of the temple and its renovations. The temple was damaged in 1962 and the rear house was largely rebuilt at this time.

6. Sanshan Hokkien Temple, 1796

(also known as Hội Quán Tam Sơn, San Hui Temple, Fuzhou Guild Hall and 三山會館)

Built by immigrants from Fuzhou to worship the Lords of the 3 Mountains, this temple also holds a shrine to the goddess of fertility, Me Sanh, and is known locally as the right place to pray for a baby. When I was there, a couple of the tiniest puppies were cuddling in front of an altar.

The Cu Chi Tunnels, HCMC | Vietnam

About an hour outside HCMC, the Cu Chi tunnels consist of 450 kilometers (!!!!!!!) of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong to operate around Saigon during the Vietnam War. They are a mandatory class trip for Vietnamese schoolchildren, and everyone I told about my visit asked me if I ate the potatoes! The famous potatoes are narrow white sweet potatoes that the Viet Cong subsisted on because they grew easily underground; for the record, yes, I did try them and they were tasty.

The tunnels served as underground villages for the Viet Cong. The area had been bombed so much that there were barely any trees; anyone above ground could be spotted and shot from 5km away. So, whole families lived underground, manufacturing weapons, growing food, etc. There were workshops, kitchens, strategy rooms etc. up to 3 levels underground. There were also airshafts, and tunnels emptying out into the Saigon river.

Even the shallow, clean, enlarged tunnels built for tourists are so dark and damp it seems unbelievable that anyone would choose to live there. Many who did were starved, stunted, and sick when they emerged. “Tunnel rats” were American soldiers chosen for their small stature and tasked with entering the tunnels and fighting hand to hand with whoever they encountered there. It was considered more or less a suicide mission; seeing firsthand what both sides endured underlines the ridiculousness of war.

My tour guide was a septuagenarian war vet named Tuan, and his stories and explanations were the heart of the visit. The company I used was Vietnam Adventure Tours; I highly recommend you use them and request Tuan. He only does the Cu Chi tour, because he is not a tour guide per se, he is a sociable, fit, elderly man who speaks English incredibly well (he was an ARVN officer) and wants to tell visitors his truth before vets like him are gone in another generation or so.

Pagoda Hopping in Cholon: Part 1, HCMC | Vietnam

As early as 1698, as many as 40,000 Chinese immigrants were recorded as living in Cholon (roughly equivalent to present day districts 5,6, and 11), then the largest Chinatown in the world. Known as the Ming-Heung, they were political refugees from the fall of the Ming dynasty, and formed the first intermarried Sino-Vietnamese community in the South. Chinese immigration continued at low, stable levels through the 18th century, despite the massacres of ethnic Chinese that occurred after every intercession of the Qing dynasty into the wars between the various kingdoms and duchies that make up modern day Vietnam, including those of the Trịnh lords, Nguyễn lords, Lê dynasty, and Tây Sơn brothers.

The Tây Sơn army in particular alternately massacred and recruited Chinese, with sanctioned pogroms in 1776, 1783 and 1792. The Chinese community didn’t emigrate; they simply changed their allegiance to the Nguyễn lords. So did the Qianlong emperor, whose troops helped enthrone them as the Nguyễn dynasty in 1802. Under their rule, ethnic Chinese enjoyed equal status under the law.

Currently only 5% of the population of Cholon identifies as Hoa; whoever stayed after the purges during the Sino-Viet war is now completely assimilated. Even so, the halls are still very active. So let’s take a look! For ease of use, I’ve titled them as their name appears on google maps. I’ve also sorted from oldest to newest.

1. Teochew Guan Yu Temple, 1684

(also known as Nghia An Hoi Quan Pagoda, Guan Di Temple, Yian Clan Hall, Ong Pagoda)

Originally built in 1684 by Teochew immigrants, Guan Di/Yu (the god of war and literature) is worshipped here. The temple is famous for its traditional woodwork. The best night to visit is the 15th day of the lunar new year, when an annual full scale traditional opera is performed.

2. Quan Am pagoda, 1740

(also known as the Ôn Lăng temple)

Built in 1740 by Hokkien immigrants from Quanzhou prefecture, the Quan Am pagoda is the biggest and flashiest of Cholon’s Chinese halls. Three gods are primarily worshipped here: Guanyin (the goddess of mercy), Mazu (the Fujianese sea goddess and queen of heaven), and Amitabha Buddha (the Buddha of immeasurable light and life).

3. Ba Thien Hau Temple, 1760

(also known as Guangzhou Guild Hall, Matsu Temple, and Cholon Po temple)

Supposedly the oldest surviving Taoist temple in the district, Mazu (the goddess of seafarers) is worshipped here. Mazu is one of the most commonly worshipped goddesses in the Chinese diaspora because it was customary for immigrants to set up a temple in her honor once they arrived at their new destinations safely. The temple is famed for its ceramic sculpted finishes.

Ao Dai Museum, HCMC | Vietnam

The Ao Dai museum is 18 km outside of HCMC, around a 45 minute drive. It’s far enough from the city for the sky to actually be vibrant and blue (as opposed to opaque, polluted white) and the layout features several traditional style buildings around a large pond. It’s perfect for an impromptu photo shoot, and several people were around doing just that, taking pictures and sharing their lunches in gazebos. Ducks, chickens, dogs, and puppies are semi-contained in their own areas, but roam with some freedom.

There’s a row of small traditional style two story attached houses, each with traditional costumes specific to a minority group or region, complete with pictures, explanations and even instruments or other props. There’s a hall full of children’s books and art supplies, where I assume activities are held during non-covid times. There are a couple offices, and a couple combo workshop/showrooms where presumably you can order an ao dai; they may be tied to the designer Si Hoang, who owns the place. All of the buildings are constructed with traditional Vietnamese wooden architectural elements in traditional styles, though not wholly so as they are adapted for modern use.

The main attraction is the hall of ao dai, featuring representative historic styles, examples from Vietnam’s current top designers (including more than a few by Si Hoang himself), costumes worn by famous performers of traditional Vietnamese music genres, and costumes or formalwear worn by other famous Vietnamese artists including writers and painters.

Disclaimer: though versions of the ao dai were part of court attire in the Northern and Southern kingdoms, the highly symbolic, rank based and regional nature of court attire is a complex topic deserving of its own post, so it’s not discussed in this one. This post focuses on the ao dai everyday women chose to wear.

Historic Vietnamese dress is generally less well attested than European dress, but extant illustrations and paintings show the evolution of Vietnam’s traditional costume, and how it compares to styles worn in China, Japan, and Korea in the same eras. Recognizable ao dai first appear in the mid 17th century, and are called 4 part ao dai, referring to the 4 pattern pieces of the simple wrap dress. The dress itself was typically brown, and worn over a long black skirt or very loose trousers; older women wore dark colored blouses underneath, while young women and girls wore white or pink blouses. A black waistband was often accentuated with a green or blue silk sash.

The 5part ao dai appeared around 200 years later, and mainly served to signal a higher social class than the 4 part ao dai. The 5th part is a hidden section that served as a combo bra and collar, and the overall appearance of the ao dai resembled Qing Dynasty costume much more closely, wrapping high above the bust, with a mandarin collar and five frog style button closures down the right side. Though the buttons had symbolic meaning (representing the 5 virtues of humanity, civility, gratitude, intellect and credibility), by the 1910s and 20s women were using invisible buttons and snaps instead, as flat hardware-free dresses were considered easier to wear jewelry with.

In the 1930s, Lemur (Nguyen Cat Tuong) became Vietnam’s most famous fashion designer, introducing European styles and trends into ao dai design. For example, you could order traditional narrow sleeves . . . or short sleeves, or puff sleeves, or flared sleeves, or no sleeves! Your ao dai could be short or long, collar or no collar, buttons or no buttons; it could be made for any occasion from a wedding to an afternoon at the beach. His designs were also cut closer to the body (though still loose fit by modern standards) and deemed outré by many. He disappeared at the too young age of 34 (captured by the French militia during their retaking of Hanoi in 1946) making his creations iconic collectibles.

The next lasting change to the ao dai happened in the early 1950s: the tightly fitted, cinched waist look was born, though balanced somewhat by high mandarin collars and generally longer lengths. One of the first fashion-related cultural differences that struck me when I arrived in Vietnam was how it is considered slutty/disrespectful to actually show any skin like cleavage, thighs, or even just shoulders . . . but it’s somehow OK to wear a completely see-through, skin tight ao dai with a brightly colored pushup bra underneath. An acquaintance explained “the Vietnamese woman’s ‘secret’ is to show nothing but reveal everything.”

In the late ‘50s and ‘60s, ao dai became a fashion item, reflecting international trends including boatnecks, raglan sleeves, psychedelic prints, midi lengths, and lots of variation on the trousers (cigarette style, palazzos, bell bottoms etc.) Though Western style daywear had become the norm, the fights for independence and reunification also inspired young people to wear more traditional clothing as a patriotic gesture.

Following Vietnam opening up its economy in the very late 80s and 90s, ao dai became a high fashion item, with domestic designers expanding the role of ao dai beyond costume, formalwear and granny attire. If you’re curious as to who Vietnam’s eminent ao dai designers are today, look no further than the museum’s board of directors: Si Hoang, Minh Hanh, Cong Tri, Vu Viet Ha, Thuy, Nguyen Si Toan, Nga Phan, Nguyen Ngoc Nga, and My Hao.

I found my visit to be a worthy use of a morning despite the hour and half of car time, particularly due to the beautiful scenery. However, if you are a serious textile or fashion nerd, there’s not a lot of info here, even less of it in English, and just one or two examples of each era defining style. So, a nice experience overall, but don’t expect climate controlled displays, acid free swatch albums, etc. There are reference books on display; if I ever find the one about Lemur in a bookshop I’ll definitely pick it up!