5 Best Sights in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Completed in 1890, the building has been the residence for the French governor of Cochin China, the Japanese governor during Vietnam's brief Japanese occupation, and the envoy of Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam, and also served as the Supreme Court. Since 1975, it's been a museum (formerly known as the Museum of the Revolution) with a strong focus on the Vietnamese struggle against the French and Americans. Displays focus on famous marches, military battles, and anti-French and anti-American activists. Exhibits include photos of historical events, uprisings, student demonstrations, and the self-immolation of the monk Thich Quang Duc as a protest against the war. The building itself is as interesting as many of the exhibits inside: a neoclassic design, it has huge columns outside and 19th-century ballrooms with lofty ceilings inside. Beneath the building are concrete bunkers and tunnels connecting to the Reunification Palace. It was here that President Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–63) and his notorious brother Ngo Dinh Nhu hid before being caught and eventually executed in 1963. Outside on the grounds are Soviet tanks, an American helicopter, and antiaircraft guns.

This example of early French-colonial architecture in Vietnam, nicknamed the Dragon House (Nha Rong), could be considered more interesting than most of the displays within. Sitting quayside on Ben Nghe Channel, at far end of Ham Nghi, it was constructed in 1863 as the original French customshouse; any individuals coming to colonial Saigon would have had to pass through the building once they docked at the port. Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), who was known as Nguyen Sinh Cung as a child, Nguyen Tat Thanh as a schoolboy, and later Nguyen Ai Quoc as well as other aliases, passed through here in 1911 on the way to his 30-year sojourn around Europe and America. Inside are some of his personal belongings, including his journals, fragments of his clothing, and his rubber sandals. Uncle Ho, as he's now affectionately known, was an ascetic type of guy, known for wearing sandals made only from tires; these are now scattered in museums around the country.

This fascinatingly eclectic museum is in a beautiful colonial building inside the grounds of Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens, with various galleries dedicated to different eras. Much of Vietnam's history, and consequently its identity today, has been influenced by outsiders. In ancient times the Khmer and Chinese empires occupied large portions of modern-day Vietnam, and in more recent times the country has been partially or completely occupied by French, Japanese, and American forces. The museum gives a Vietnamese perspective on these events.

Dedicated to the first president of the unified post-war Vietnam, Ton Duc Thang, this stark museum is of interest mainly to avid historians and political junkies, who will relish the insights it offers into government propaganda in the downstairs section, featuring letters from family members. The museum contains items from Uncle Ton's personal life, such as his spectacles and a rattan trunk, as well as gifts from foreign leaders and replicas of various huts he lived in while fighting the French in the 1940s and '50s.

This is a grueling museum focused on the horrors of the Vietnam War, known as the American War in Vietnam, with indoor exhibitions featuring graphic photographs of dismembered bodies and dead children and infants. Outside the machines of war (fighter planes, tanks, howitzers, bombs) are displayed and there's a re-creation of the infamous tiger cages of Con Dao prison island. If you go, take Kleenex and a stoic demeanor. Expect to see the war from a different perspective than you might see in the United States.