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.

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!

FITO Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine | HCMC, Vietnam

The Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine (FITO) in Ho Chi Minh City is a privately owned museum detailing the development of Vietnamese herbal medicine, also known as Southern medicine, as a distinct tradition from Northern, or traditional Chinese, medicine. It also covers related traditional therapies like acupuncture, medicinal wine and footbaths.

Vietnamese traditional medicine differs from Chinese traditional medicine in that it uses far fewer animal products, relatively more fresh than dried herbs, generally less complicated decoctions, and there have been a series of famous Vietnamese doctors over hundreds of years establishing recipes different from those used in China and other neighboring regions. 

That said, Vietnamese traditional medicine originates from southern Chinese practices, and is far closer to Chinese traditional medicine than Indian traditional medicine in every way, unlike neighboring Cambodia and Thailand. Furthermore, Ho Chi Minh City specifically has a distinctly Chinese element to its culture thanks to centuries of Chinese immigration, intermarriage, and economic dominance in Cholon. So, the traditional medicine utilized here today is yet another degree closer to what might be encountered in southern China.

I’ve already covered the topic of TVM in some depth in my post about the traditional medicine museum in Hoi An, so please refer to that post for more information. I would say the subject is explored in greater depth at the FITO museum, but either place has more information than anyone not interested in medical history or personal treatment could ever care to know.

If you can’t tell, I’m not a believer in traditional medicine! However, I still think this museum is a must-see in HCMC- not because of its explanation of TVM, but because it is in fact an art history museum! The building is new construction, but a complex marriage of salvaged antique architectural and ornamental elements and necessarily new elements, handmade in the traditional way with traditional materials. There are countless priceless artworks, antiques, and artifacts, on display throughout, dating as far back as prehistory, and including Chinese, Thai, Korean, Cham and Khmer pieces in addition to the purely Vietnamese. All are arranged with care in as close to the traditional manner as possible; many examples are equal to or better than what they have in Vietnam’s national art museums. This is clearly the lifetime collection of a connoisseur.

My photos simply don’t do the place justice, due mostly to an overabundance of green toned fluorescent tube lights and very warm-toned, high wattage, small spotlights throughout that frustrated the color correction software of my iPhone; the video gives a more realistic impression.

Whoever assembled this place clearly has extensive knowledge of Vietnamese art and architectural history, a refined eye, and no budgetary concerns. Even the elevator is adorned with custom-carved, mother-of-pearl encrusted panels in the style of traditional room screens and cabinets. The collection here has clearly been thoughtfully assembled over decades, and the most I could get out of the guide was that it was ‘a hobby’. He was able to answer questions about specific pieces, but I found myself reading the various labels hoping to learn more about the age and provenance of the object, not what it depicted about traditional medicine. Spoiler: those details were usually not provided. 

I found this place so intriguing I visited twice. I think for decorative arts buffs, this is the most underrated hidden gem in Ho Chi Minh City. Also, while I typically decline the tea/avoid the shop, I tried it here in a moment of literal, physical weakness, and was very pleasantly surprised. The lotus and licorice tea is very sweet and warm and cost only 50,000 dong for a box of 20 teabags, very reasonable for the quality.

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.