Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [63]
Inside, a series of halls present a grisly portfolio of photographs of mutilation, napalm burns and torture. Most shocking is the gallery detailing the effects of the 75 million litres of defoliant sprays dumped across the country: beside the expected images of bald terrain, hideously malformed foetuses are preserved in pickling jars. A gallery that looks at international opposition to the war as well as the American peace movement adds a sense of balance, and makes a change from the self-glorifying tone of most Vietnamese museums. Accounts of servicemen – such as veteran B52 pilot Michael Heck – who attempted to discharge themselves from the war on ethical grounds are also featured. Artefacts donated to the museum by returned US servicemen add to the reconciliatory tone.
At the back of the museum is a grisly mock-up of the tiger cages, the godless prison cells of "Con Son Island", which could have been borrowed from the movie set of Papillon. The souvenir shop, hidden between the tanks and planes in the courtyard, sells Zippo lighters, penknives, dog tags and models crafted from spent bullets.
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City | The Reunification Palace and around |
Xa Loi Pagoda
Vapid Xa Loi Pagoda (daily 6–11.30am & 2–9pm), a short walk west of the museum at 89 Ba Huyen Thanh Quan, became a hotbed of Buddhist opposition to Diem in 1963. The austere, 1956-built complex is unspectacular, its most striking component a tall tower whose unlovely beige blocks lend it a drabness even six tiers of Oriental roofs can’t quite dispel. The main sanctuary, accessed by a dual staircase (men scale the left-hand flight, women the right), is similarly dull: beyond a vast joss-stick urn inventively decorated with marbles and shards of broken china, it’s a lofty hall featuring a huge gilt Buddha and fourteen murals that narrate his life. Turn left and around the back of the Buddha, and you’ll come across a shrine commemorating Thich Quang Duc and the other monks who set fire to themselves in Saigon in 1963 (see "The self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc"). Quang Duc’s is the ghostly figure holding a set of beads, to the left of the shrine.
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City |
Ben Thanh Market and around
There’s much more beneath the pillbox-style clock tower of Ben Thanh Market than just the cattle and seafood pictured on its front wall. The city’s busiest market for almost a century, and known to the French as the Halles Centrales, Ben Thanh’s dense knot of trade has caused it to burst at the seams, disgorging stalls onto the surrounding pavements. Inside the main body of the market, a tight grid of aisles, demarcated according to produce, teems with shoppers, and, if it’s souvenirs you’re after, a reconnaissance here will reveal conical hats, basketware, bags, shoes, Da Lat coffee and Vietnam T-shirts. All this, though, is tame stuff compared with the wet market along the back of the complex, where you’ll find buckets of eels, clutches of live frogs tied together at the legs, heaps of pigs’ ears and snouts, and baskets wedged full of hens, among other gruesome sights. If you can countenance the thought of eating after seeing – and smelling – this patch of the market, com, pho and baguette stalls proliferate towards the back of the main hall. In the evenings, foodstalls specializing in seafood set up along the sides of the market, attracting a mixed crowd of locals and tourists.
The aroma of jasmine and incense replaces the stench of butchery a block northwest of Ben Thanh, at Truong Dinh’s Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple. Less engaging than Sri Thendayyutthapani