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!

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.

A Historic Walking Tour Around Hoan Kiem Lake | Hanoi, Vietnam

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology | Hanoi, Vietnam

Built in 1987, The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology showcases the culture of the 54 ethnic minorities living in Vietnam, plus some inevitable exhibits on Kinh culture of the past. The museum has three main areas. The primary building shows the traditional costumes, instruments, language, crafts, and rituals of the various ethnicities. The secondary building expands beyond Vietnam to show the roots and presence of the various ethnicities elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and the connections between them. The third area, and definitely the most interesting of them, is the outdoor garden, featuring full-scale dwellings built by various tribes as they would have done in their villages. 

The 54 ethnic minorities of Vietnam are an intriguing subject. Composing roughly 9% of the population and divided into dozens of subgroups, photographers and anthropologists have spent decades motorcycling the country, finding, meeting, living with and studying them. 

Making up 88% of the population, Viet or Kinh people arrived in the red river delta from Southern China between four and five thousand years ago. Some of the ethnic minorities were already present in the area, but many were not. Over around 1000 years, the Kinh conquered or absorbed indigenous groups until they became the overwhelmingly dominant culture, moving ever further south. In Vietnamese creation myth, this history is described thus: The Dragon King of the South married Au Co, a beautiful northern princess, and she gave birth to 100 strong princes. However, missing his lowland home, he decided to return there. He left 50 sons in the highlands, where they fathered the tribes, and took the remaining 50 south, where they became the Kinh people.

Members of the highland tribes are distinguishable by physical features, language, dress, and customs, in that order. As an ignorant outsider, even when visiting them in their homes, some groups are more easily distinguishable than others. For example, the difference between Dao and Hmong was obvious to me, but the difference among subgroups- Red v. Black Dao, Black v. Green Hmong etc., needed to be explained to me. Relatively speaking, Westerners have a lot of cultural and linguistic overlap; if you understand one Romance or Nordic language, with a bit of relatively superficial study you can understand a good part of them all. It was wild to me that people living on either side of a single mountain in Northern Vietnam wouldn't understand each other or intermarry for hundreds or thousands of years. The origins and development of the related groups, their diasporas and distinctions, are a rich field of study for ethnographers. 

Based on language, there are 8 original peoples, if you will, who over the centuries have subdivided into the 54+ we know today:

1. Mon – Khmer (Ba Na, Brau, Bru Van Kieu, Cho Ro, Co, Co Ho, Co Tu, Gie Trieng, Hre, Khang, Khmer, Kho Mu, Ma, Mang, M’nong, O Du, Ro Mam, Ta Oi, Xinh Mun, Xo Dang, and Xtieng)

2. Tay – Thai (Bo Y, Giay, Lao, Lu, Nung, San Chay, Tay, and Thai)

3. Tibeto – Burman (Cong, Ha Nhi, La Hu, Lo Lo, Phu La, and Si La)

4. Malayo – Polynesian (Cham, Chu Ru, E De, Gia Rai, and Ra Glai)

5. Viet – Muong (Chut, Kinh, Muong, and Tho)

6. Kadai (Co, Lao, La Chi, La Ha, and Pu Peo)

7. Mong – Dao (Dao, H’Mong, and Pa Then)

8. Han (Hoa, Ngai, and San Diu)

At the museum, they are grouped as:

1. Muong, Tho, Chut

2. Tay-Thai Group

3. Kadai Group

4. Hmong-Yao Group

5. Sino-Tibetan Group

6. Northern Mon-Khmer

7. Truong Son Range - Central Highlands Mon-Khmer

8. Austronesian

9. Cham, Hoa, Khmer

According to the museum, what the ethnic minorities have in common is their traditional way of life: most of the groups rely on wet rice agriculture, combined with raising poultry, hunting, and fishing. They also typically practice handicrafts including weaving, forging, pottery, and carpentry for personal consumption and local barter, and only participate in commerce on a limited basis. Most ethnic groups consider the village as the most important social unit; however, village organization, house styles, family, society, and religious traditions are diverse. Spiritual beliefs remain genuine, and rites shape calendars.

The role of the ethnic minorities in recent history, and their degree of assimilation to Viet, American, French, and Chinese culture, politics and religion is left untouched. I was shocked to learn that many Hmong are some degree of Catholic, for example, and had to visit them to learn it; it's not in this museum. Also, the Montagnards rather famously allied with the French during the Indochina wars, in exchange for the promise of an autonomous homeland, but their role in this recent history and in modern Vietnamese politics, where they are well represented in the party congress, is not explored.

As for the museum itself, I think it's a good jumping-off point but rather too superficial. If you're coming in with a total ignorance of the topic, I'd recommend you visit the bookstore first, read up, then hit the museum to match the objects of material culture with the info and photos you've absorbed. In terms of costume, jewelry, shamanistic and cultural objects, you can see much of the same at the history museum and the women's museum. However, the ethnology museum really sets itself apart in the garden. 

If you are not going to make it to every mountain village during your trip to Vietnam, you can rest assured that the houses here are full-sized, rather luxurious dwellings built by the ethnic minorities themselves, who were paid dearly to come to Hanoi and do the job. The houses and the objects in them are the real thing, and immense fun, especially for kids. 

The bookstore is also excellent, and the gift shop, while expensive, is a Craft Link shop, with excellent quality souvenirs made by the ethnic minorities themselves, and other underprivileged populations, ensuring your money flows back to them, at least in part. The restaurant employs students at a vocational school for underprivileged youth, training them for hospitality jobs, so it's certainly worth patronizing. Lastly, there's an excellent daily water puppet performance. I've been to the famous water puppet theater in Hanoi as well, and this performance is equally wonderful, if not better, because it provides a booklet explaining each of the stories, which are hundreds of years old and well known by all, rather like Punch and Judy shows in the UK. 

If you have kids, this museum is a must-see in Hanoi. If you don't, it's not an absolute must, the information can be gleaned elsewhere, but I did truly enjoy it.

Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi | Vietnam

Of the 20+ museums in Hanoi, this is my favorite! It’s very much a living museum, constantly showcasing community issues and outreach, and honoring living women of impact in a deserving manner.

The museum’s permanent collection is divided into three permanent exhibits: Women in the Family, Women in History, and Women in Fashion.

Women in the Family covers the traditional roles of women in different segments of Vietnamese society, with a particular focus on the ethnic minority tribes and rural life; patriarchal and matriarchal marriage and social hierarchies are explained, as are birthing rituals, and women’s economic contributions as farmers, craftspeople and educators.

Women in History focuses heavily on heroines of the colonial resistance, liberation, and communist movements and heroic mothers of the nation.

Women in Fashion displays ethnic dress and jewelry from many of Vietnam’s ethnic minority groups, often personally given by the original owner along with its story. Traditional costume for big events like weddings is explained, as is the evolution of the ao dai; examples of pre-colonial fashion are preserved, including oversized old-style bamboo hats and teeth lacquering accoutrements.

There’s also a robust rotation of temporary exhibits, typically a photo essay with a few accompanying artifacts or artworks. So far there have been 11 temporary exhibits: Memories from Female Civilian Supporters of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, the Founding of the Vietnamese Women’s Liberation Movement and its role in society according to Ho Chi Minh, Stories from the Peaceful Shelter home for women trafficked abroad, Single Mother’s Voices, the Difficulties Faced by Female Economic Migrants to Vietnam’s urban centers, Personal Accounts of Domestic Violence, the Daily Life of Green Living Teams in Hanoi and Hoi An, Traditional Worship of the Mother Goddess, the Vietnamese Women’s Union 13th National Congress exhibit, and the UN 75 Photo Exhibition winners.

This museum is one of the few worth a repeat visit. They also have an excellent gift shop and decent restaurant on the premises.

St. Joseph's Cathedral, Hanoi | Vietnam

Built in 1886 and consecrated on Christmas Eve of that year, the Neo-Gothic St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi was one of the first places I visited on moving to Asia, and it immediately hit me that I wasn’t in Kansas (or, I suppose, Paris) anymore. Outside, it is incredibly dirty due to unabated, unfiltered traffic mere feet away, and likely years of neglect. Inside, it is simple, with no decor beyond its original stained glass windows imported from France, and the lightly maintained gold lacquer on the woodwork. There is a single local touch; the virgin Mary is sculpted enclosed in a palanquin and reclining sideways on a pillow, a bit more in the manner of a reclining Buddha than how we typically see her.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the church is that it was closed for 35 years; after the French withdrawal from Hanoi in 1954, Catholicism was persecuted until 1990, when the cathedral was permitted to reopen. Perhaps it’s worth popping in if you’re in the neighborhood anyway, and it’s nice to see in the background when you eat on a balcony of one of the restaurants on the square, but it’s not worth a dedicated visit.

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.

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.