Geography

In the core of the Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is second the most important in Vietnam after Hanoi. It is not only a commercial center but also a scientific, technological, industrial and tourist center. The city is bathed by many rivers, arroyos and canals, the biggest river being the Saigon River. The Port of Saigon, established in 1862, is accessible to ships weighing up to 30,000 tons, a rare advantage for an inland river port.
Climate:The climate is generally hot and humid. There are two distinctive seasons: the rainy season, from May to November, and the dry season, from December to April. The annual average temperature is 27ºC. The hottest month is April and the lowest is December. It is warm all year.
History
Many centuries ago, Saigon was already a busy commercial center. Merchants from China, Japan and many European countries would sail upstream the Saigon River to reach the islet of Pho, a trading center. In the year of 1874, Cho Lon merged with Saigon, forming the largest city in the Indochina. It had been many times celebrated as the Pearl of the Far East. After the reunification of the country, the 6^th National Assembly in its meeting of the 2^nd of July, 1976, has officially rebaptized Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. The history of city relates closely with the struggle for the independence and freedom of Vietnam.
Tourism
Today, Ho Chi Minh City is the big tourism center in Vietnam, attracting a large of visitors to Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City has various attractions as Ho Chi Minh Museum, formerly known as Dragon House Wharf, Cu Chi Tunnels, system of museums, theatres, cultural houses... Recently, many tourist areas are invested such as Thanh Da, Binh Quoi Village, Dam Sen Park, Saigon Water Park, Suoi Tien, Ky Hoa..., which draw numerous tourists.
Despite its quite recent past, Ho Chi Minh City nevertheless possesses various beautiful buildings, displaying a characteristic combination of Vietnamese, Chinese and European cultures. These include Nha Rong (Dragon House Wharf), Quoc To Temple (National Ancestors Temple), Xa Tay (Municipal Office), Ho Chi Minh Municipal Theatre as well as many pagodas and churches (Vinh Nghiem, Giac Vien, Giac Lam, Phung Son pagodas...). After more than 300 years of development, Ho Chi Minh City presents many ancient architectural constructions, famous vestiges and renowned sights. It is remarkable for its harmonious blending of traditional national values with northern and western cultural features.
Transportation
Ho Chi Minh City is the main junction for trains, roads, water, and air transportation systems for domestic trips and for foreign destination.
- Roads: Ho Chi Minh City is 1,730km from Hanoi, 99km from Tay Ninh, 30km from Bien Hoa (Dong Nai), 70km from My Tho, 125km from Vung Tau, 168km from Can Tho, 308km from Dalat, and 375km from Buon Ma Thuot. The City has National Highway 13 which connects Vietnam with the rest of Indochina.
- Train: Thong Nhat express train connects Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, vie many provinces in Vietnam.
- Air: Tan Son Nhat International Airport, 7km from center of city, is the biggest airport with many domestic and international routes. There are flights from Hanoi and Danang to Ho Chi Minh City and between the City to many regions as well a lot of countries on over the world.

The War Remnants Museum

The History Museum

The Fine Arts Museum

Ho Chi Minh Museum

The Reunification Palace

Ben Thanh Market

Cho Lon

The Jade Emperor Pagoda

Duc Ba Cathedral

Cu Chi Tunnels

Ben Duoc Monument

Binh Quoi Tourist Village

By far the most popular of Ho Chi Minh City’s museums, the War Remnants Museum presents a partial, but riveting, view of the American War, as it is known in Vietnam. The horrors of warfare, aptly demonstrated by a large gallery of graphic pictures and deformed embryos, and a grisly display of some of the hideous booby-traps used by the Viet Cong to protect the Cu Chi tunnel network, are counterbalanced by a room concerned with international opposition to the war and the American peace movement.

Outside are an interesting exhibition of military hardware and a mock-up of one of the infamous ‘tiger cages’ used in the prison on Con Son Island. The latter reminds visitors that the conflict was, in reality, a civil war, with US forces supporting the Vietnamese ‘Saigon regime’. The tiger cages were used to torture suspected Viet Cong guerrillas first by the French, and later by officers of the South Vietnam Army.

Ho Chi Minh City’s History Museum is housed in an attractive building next to the Botanical Gardens. Most of its exhibits are presented in chronological order from Vietnam’s primeval landscape to the expulsion of the French colonialists.

Although conservative in its approach to display, and lacking effective interpretation of the significance of its many artefacts, it provides a comprehensive and comprehensible overview of the creation and development of Vietnam.

Among the specialised displays is a well presented exhibition of Champa statuary second only to the Champa Museum in Danang in quality, and relicts from Oc Eo, a large port serving Funan, a Hindu Kingdom close to Vietnam’s present border with Cambodia that flourished in the first half of the first millennium.

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The building housing the Fine Arts Museum is worth a visit in its own right as a fine example of French Colonial architecture. Inside, there are some interesting exhibits, notably a large display of propaganda posers and images from Vietnam’s ‘social realism’ period, and a good collection of Cham and Oc Eo artefacts. Unfortunately, the galleries seem to be arranged more or less at random, and lack interpretation, so it’s very difficult to gain an understanding of the development of Vietnamese art.

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From City Hall, another short walk takes you to the Reunification Palace. It occupies the site of the Norodom Palace, an early colonial masterpiece constructed to accommodate the Governor–general of Indochina. When the French left, it was taken over by Ngo Dinh Diem to be his Presidential Palace. It was pulled down after being bombed by two insurgent South Vietnam Air Force pilots in a failed attempt to assassinate the President.

Its present building is hardly up to the architectural standards of its predecessor – at first glance, the upper floors resemble a sixties-style multi-storey car park. Inside, it’s a fascination time warp, little changed since its occupation by the Saigon regime.

In District 1, not far from the main tourist area, Ben Thanh is the largest market in Saigon and one of its main attraction. It sells almost everything - food, clothes, jewellery, live snakes, vehicle spares, medicine, and much, much more. It's popularity means prices are higher than elsewhere, but the experience is worth it.

Its narrow aisles are a shoppers paradise, providing you're not claustrophobic or not keen on haggling. Ask the price (the vendor will probably use a calculator to show you) and offer around half the amount.

Don't worry about a low bid - stall holders love negotiating and would be up set if you give up too early.

Some of the goods on sale are imported and some are smuggled.

Many are fakes, so apply common sense - finding a genuine article on the luxury goods stalls would be like picking up a gold bar on the pavement.

If the noise and crowds get to be a bit much, there's a 'food court' in the centre. Dozens of small stalls offer a bewildering range of food at next-to-nothing prices. Don't hope for burgers or doughnuts, though - it's basic Vietnamese cuisine only!

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Once a Chinese ghetto, Cho Lon rose to be Saigon’s commercial heartland. After reunification, many Vietnamese of Chinese extraction started to flee the country fearing reprisals after their support of the Saigon Regime. Vietnam’s deteriorating relationship with its huge neighbour culminating in the abortive Chinese invasion of 1979 turned the river of refugees into a raging torrent, but even though hundreds of thousands left, there is still a large Chinese population.

Visitors looking for the highly decorated Chinatowns found in Western cities will be disappointed – it’s much more authentic than the tacky tourist attractions in the UK and US. Apart from its continual commercial activity, tiny shops, massive markets and fascinating street life, it contains some of the best temples and assembly houses in Saigon. To do it justice, a half-day would be inadequate.

We regard the Jade Emperor as the best example of a Taoist pagoda in Vietnam from a tourism point of view, not just for its religious value but also for its sheer exuberance.

Entering the temple courtyard, visitors will encounter a small pool on the right full of large terrapins and, on the left, a series of enclosures containing dozens of tortoises that give it its local name of the ‘Tortoise Pagoda’. Usually, there will be women selling birds to be released by the purchaser to curry favour with the gods.

The interior is dominated by an effigy of the Jade Emperor, correctly addressed as 'Most Venerable Highest Jade Emperor of All-Embracing Sublime Spontaneous Existence of the Heavenly Golden Palace’. He is the head of the heavenly bureaucracy, governing spirits assigned to oversee the workings of the natural world and the administration of moral justice.

The gods in heaven behaved, and were treated, much the same as officials in the human world - worshipping them was a kind of rehearsal for dealing with the secular authorities. Demons and the ghosts of hell acted like bullies and outlaws threatening strangers in the real world and were treated accordingly. To avoid their attentions, people bribed them or invoked the martial forces of the spirit world’s officials to arrest them.

All these elements can be seen in the Pagoda. The mighty Emperor monitoring entry through the gates of heaven is flanked by his senior officers, one bearing a light to illuminate the path, the other wielding an axe to administer justice, and his other officials and lesser deities.

The King of Hell and his red horse are on the right of the chamber surrounded by the two gods of yin and yang, and four more gods who mete out punishment for evil and reward goodness. He looks towards the ‘Hall of the Ten Hells’, a room containing ten magnificently carved panes that vie with Hieronymus Bosch for depictions of the horrors awaiting the ungodly.

Next door, there is another room with twelve ceramic figures of women with many babies presided over by Kim Hoa, the protector of all mothers and children. Each figurine represents a particular human characteristic, good or bad, and one year of the 12 year Chinese calendar. Childless couples often visit this small chapel to pray to be granted a child.

To the left of the Jade Emperor in an enclosure containing Thien Loi, the god of lightning and other deities, is a life-sized effigy of a horse. This is also popular with women who seek fertility – they rub its flanks and neck and whisper their prayers in its ears.

Elsewhere around the walls are more effigies of figures from other religions, mainly Buddhism.

For an Occidental, making sense of the rich symbolism, decoration and ritual is almost impossible. A good guide can help to shed a little light into the complexity of Taoism, It takes many years to acquire a reasonable understanding of the faith.

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Location: Duc Ba Cathedral is located on Han Thuyen Street, facing down Dong Khoi Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.
Characteristic: The resplendent Governor’s Palace, completed in 1875, symbolized the regime’s political power in Asia. And five years later, the Duc Ba (Our Lady’s) Cathedral was inaugurated, and became the spiritual and cultural crucible of the French presence in the Orient.

After the first French colonizing force arrived in Vietnam in the mid - 19thcentury, it took only 21 years before the country had a cathedral to match the hulking Gothic edifices of France itself. The cathedral is supposed to represent the glory of the French Empire. Yet, as is always the case with colonization, this attempt to import French traditions into Vietnam transformed the colonizers’ culture in the process. Even though the cathedral is built in a Western architectural style, it has a uniquely Eastern aspect.
Several architects put forward design proposals for the cathedral, but in 1877 the authorities selected Mr Bourard, who was famed for his religious architecture. He envisaged, and executed, a basilica-like structure with a square plan. The cathedral is composed of two main central bays with two sidereal corridors, with tall pillars and light coming in through sets of high windows, and a semi-circular shrine. The style follows a Roman pattern, although the outside contains some modifications: the cathedral’s vaults are Gothic, and a modern steel skeleton supports the whole building.
In 1894 a pointed minaret was added to the bell tower, at the behest of an architect named Gardes, who was also responsible for the Xa Tay Palace, the building that now houses the Municipal People’s Committee. The cathedral is a much smaller than those in France, but it was the largest in the French empire. The interior is very large: the principal shrine and two additional bays are 93m long, and reach 35m in width at one point. The semi-circular shrine at the rear seats a choir during services, and there are five chapels. The walls are made of Bien Hoa granite, combined with red tiles from Marseilles, all without coating. Red tiles from France were also used on the roofs, but they were later replaced with tiles of equal quality from Phu Huu. Natural light streams in through stained-glass windows which were made by the Lorin Company from the French town of Sartre.
The whole building is well-ventilated thanks to a system of air-holes placed above and under the windows. The belfry is 57m high. For a long time it was the highest structure in the city centre, and was the first thing an arriving traveller would see when approaching the city by boat. Six bells weigh a combined 25,850kg. In 1885, the floor was taken apart and new pillars were added, because the original foundation could not bear the cathedral’s weight. Stepping inside the cathedral, tourists see a line of Chinese characters eulogizing the Jesus’ mother, "the innocent and unblemished Virgin Mother", and stained-glass portraits of Vietnamese believers amid Asiatic plants. On the square in front of the cathedral, there is a statue of the Virgin Mother made of white marble, symbolizing peace. All told, it’s an unusual building: a Western architectural and religious style that has been transplanted into, and adapted to, the East. The colonizers were trying to impose French beliefs and customs onto Vietnam but once that culture arrived on Asia’s shores, it took on a life of its own. The cathedral is seen as a unique synthesis, adding an unmistakable Oriental flavour to an ancient Occidental recipe.

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Location: Cu Chi Tunnels are located approximately 70km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City centre in Cu Chi Rural District.
Characteristic: Cu Chi Tunnels consist of more than 200km of underground tunnels. This main axis system has many branches connecting to underground hideouts, shelters, and entrances to other tunnels.

Cu Chi District is known nationwide as the base where the Vietnamese mounted their operations of the Tet Offensive in 1968.The tunnels are between 0.5 to 1m wide, just enough space for a person to walk along by bending or dragging. However, parts of the tunnels have been modified to accommodate visitors. The upper soil layer is between 3 to 4m thick and can support the weight of a 50-ton tank and the damage of light cannons and bombs. The underground network provided sleeping quarters, meeting rooms, hospitals, and other social rooms. Visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels provides a better understanding of the prolonged resistance war of the Vietnamese people and also of the persistent and clever character of the Vietnamese nation.
For a place that’s physically invisible, the Cu Chi Tunnels have sure carved themselves a celebrated niche in the history of guerilla warfare. Its celebrated and unseen geography straddles – all of it underground – something which the Americans eventually found as much to their embarrassment as to their detriment. They were dug, before the American War, in the late 1940s, as a peasant-army response to a more mobile and ruthless French occupation. The plan was simple: take the resistance briefly to the enemy and then, literally, vanish.
First the French, then the Americans were baffled as to where they melted to, presuming, that it was somewhere under cover of the night in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta. But the answer lay in the sprawling city under their feet – miles and miles of tunnels. In the gap between French occupation and the arrival of the Americans the tunnels fell largely into disrepair, but the area’s thick natural earth kept them intact and maintained by nature. In turn it became not just a place of hasty retreat or of refuge, but, in the words of one military historian, "an underground land of steel, home to the depth of hatred and the incommutability of the people." It became, against the Americans and under their noses, a resistance base and the headquarters of the southern Vietnam Liberation Forces. The linked threat from the Viet Cong - the armed forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam - against the southern city forced the unwitting Americans to select Cu Chi as the best site for a massive supply base – smack on top of the then 25-year old tunnel network. Even sporadic and American’s grudgingly had to later admit, daring attacks on the new base, failed for months to indicate where the attackers were coming from – and, importantly, where they were retreating to. It was only when captives and defectors talked that it became slightly more clear. But still the entries, exits, and even the sheer scale of the tunnels weren’t even guessed at. Chemicals, smoke-outs, razing by fire, and bulldozing of whole areas, pinpointed only a few of the well-hidden tunnels and their entrances. The emergence of the Tunnel Rats, a detachment of southern Vietnamese working with Americans small enough to fit in the tunnels, could only guess at the sheer scale of Cu Chi. By the time peace had come, little of the complex, and its infrastructure of schools, dormitories, hospitals, and miles of tunnels, had been uncovered. Now, in peace, only some of it is uncovered – as a much-visited part of the southern tourist trail. Many of the tunnels are expanded replicas, to avoid any claustrophobia they would induce in tourists. The wells that provided the vital drinking water are still active, producing clear and clean water to the three-tiered system of tunnels that sustained life. A detailed map is almost impossible, for security reasons if nothing else: an innate sense of direction guided the tunnellers and those who lived in them.
Some routes linked to local rivers, including the Saigon River, their top soil firm enough to take construction and the movement of heavy machinery by American tanks, the middle tier from mortar attacks, and the lower, 8-10m down was impregnable. A series of hidden, and sometimes booby-trapped, doors connected the routes, down through a system of narrow, often unlit and invented tunnels. At one point American troops brought in a well-trained squad of 3000 sniffer dogs, but the German Shepherds were too bulky to navigate the courses. One legend has it that the dogs were deterred by Vietnamese using American soap to throw them off their scent, but more usually pepper and chilly spray was laid at entrances, often hidden in mounds disguised as molehills, to throw them off. But the Americans were never passive about the tunnels, despite being unaware of their sheer complexity. Large-scale raiding operations used tanks, artillery and air raids, water was pumped through known tunnels, and engineers laid toxic gas. But one American commander’s report at the time said: "It’s impossible to destroy the tunnels because they are too deep and extremely tortuous."
Today the halls that showed propagandas films, housed educational meetings and schooled Vietnamese in warfare are largely intact. So too are the kitchens where visitors can dine on steamed manioc, pressed rice with sesame and salt, a popular meal during the war, as they are assailed with true stories of how life went on as near-normal, much of the time. Ancestors were worshipped there, teaching was well-timetabled, poultry was raised – and even couples trusted, fell in love, were wed, and honeymooned there. But visitors have it easier: those re-constructed tunnels give the flavour of the tunnels but not the claustrophobia and the sacrifice of the estimated 18,000 who served their silent and unseen war there with only around one-third surviving, the rest casualties of American assaults, snakes, rats and insects.
Now the unseen and undeclared No Man’s Land is undergoing a revival, saluted as a Relic of National History and Culture with its Halls of Tradition displaying pictures and exhibits. The nearby Ben Duoc-Cu Chi War Memorial, where the reproduced tunnels have been built, stands as an-above ground salute to a hidden war.

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Location: Ben Duoc Monument was built in Cu Chi District, about 70km from Ho Chi Minh City centre.
Characteristic: The Ben Duoc Monument to the War Martyrs is a harmonious architectural complex. The monument was built according to the design of a traditional Vietnamese temple.

The monument is dedicated to the war martyrs from 40 cities and provinces, who laid down their lives on the battle fields in Saigon - Cho Lon - Gia Dinh during the anti-French and US resistance wars for national independence and freedom.
It has a three-entrance gate. In the main shrine are worshipped 44,357 martyrs and heroic mothers whose name are carved on marble plates and gilded with gold. On the ground floor, a mini-mock up, pictures, and many other show pieces about the hard life and battles of the army men and local people during the wars are displayed. There is also a nine-storey tower, 39m high, surrounded with gardens with flowers that blossom all the year round and with diverse kinds of ornamental plants.
Since its establishment in 1995 the monument has welcomed thousands of visitors, both domestic and foreign, especially on Martyrs' Day - July 27th - who come to enjoy the local scenery and show their respect to the national heroes.

Location: Binh Quoi Tourist Village is located on the Thanh Da peninsula by the Saigon River, 8km from the centre of Ho Chi Minh City.
Characteristic: This is the city’s biggest resort with its unique scenery.

There are 55 modern-equipped bedrooms in the village, which nestle under big trees by the river. The village’s restaurant is where big parties can be held and famous grilled dishes and Vietnamese traditional specialties can be found. There are marvellous shows of traditional music in the evening, including “Ky Yen Festival,” “Southern amateur singing on Ghe Hau,” “Traditional Vietnamese Wedding.” Such shows attract a great deal of domestic and overseas tourists. You can also go water-surfing, fishing, swimming, play tennis, and many other kinds of sport. From Binh Quoi, you can boat along the Saigon River to visit the Ben Duoc Underground Tunnel, Lai Thieu Fruit Gardens, and back to the Nha Rong Harbour.

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