So yesterday after getting totally let down by the hair clinic and not being able to do my much anticipated hair transplant surgery I still had to wait around in Saigon (HCMC) for a while and since it was in my neighborhood anyway, I decided to go to one of the museums that details the big war with USA that happened here that you might have heard of. They refer to it as the "American War" here and that is just fine because that is what it was to them.
It is free to get in, which I found delightful seeing as how in Thailand, where I lived for over a decade, museums tend to not just charge for entry but they charge extortionate prices for entry if you are a foreigner.
I honestly expected this place to be a lot more brutal than it was, but mostly it was just a collection of captured American war equipment and also a presentation about the world's reaction to America's war with Vietnam and how many nations were opposed to it. As an American, we are not taught this in schools because in USA, our schools pretend as though the USA did nothing wrong in that war, but is there such a thing as doing nothing wrong in war?
Seeing these giant tanks and planes up close was certainly really interesting because I haven't spent much time around war machines in my life. They had detailed information about the armaments and this is where I learned that some of these artillery machines are capable of firing nearly 15 km into the distance. That was totally new information for me.
There are no details about how the Vietnamese came to capture this equipment but I am going to guess that this was equipment that the USA decided to leave behind when they abandoned the country. None of it appeared to be damaged so I think that is a safe assumption.
There was also a section of the museum dedicated to the treatment of POW's and to me this was more interesting than a lot of the rest of it because like I said before, we are not taught about any of the nasty things that USA did to anyone during that time, only the other way around.
These things, which were called Tiger Cages, are made of barbed wire and whoever was contained inside of them was incapable of ever relaxing or lying down because if they did so, they would cut themselves. The pictures showed some black and white images of how the captives would be placed in the sun as well and this was a method of getting people to give up information. It was a form of torture. I do want to say that after visiting the Hanoi Hilton years ago, that a lot of these tactics were actually used by the French and I am unclear as to whether or not it was actually the Americans that were doing this. I know that I do not trust any government including and especially my own, so I suppose we will never knew who was actually doing this. In war though, it wouldn't surprise me if the USA was doing this as well.
The guillotine certainly has a French feel to it and I don't recall a point in time that the USA ever used these. The room indicates that it was a French machine and they detailed some of the people who had been executed by it including rather high ranking officers in the Vietnamese Army or Vietcong. Really, I should know more about this than I do but again, we are only told "our side" of the story in schools in USA.
Overall I would say that this museum is definitely worth visiting but if you are going to go there just get a taxi to the front door because since it is so popular it is surrounded by scam artists and ripoffs. Every 10 feet or so you are approached by someone who is trying to scam you and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth about any tourist area in Saigon (HCMC). My suggestion would be, unfortunately, to simply be rude and not answer anyone that approaches you at all in this and many other tourist areas of this city.
The museum was pretty great though and there was a ton of information inside of it that I didn't know beforehand. A lot of the reading about the protests against the USA's involvement in the war were things I never knew before.
I'm pretty sure that this will end up being something you would seek out anyway if you happened to be in the city, but if not here is where it is located.
If you have to spend time in Ho Chi Minh City, and honestly, I would suggest you don't because it is crazy busy and loud, then just book some Grab taxis to get you directly to the highlights such as this one. It's free, so there's no reason not to go!