Friday in Saigon

Today we made several short trips out into the area around our hotel to visit a few landmarks. We began the morning with another trip to the playground. After the boys got through playing, we caught a cab over to the Diamond Plaza. This is a tall building with an upscale shopping center on the bottom five floors. We had to make several trips here in 2007 to meet with our Consulate contact as we were trying to get through the process of bringing Jett home. The US government has office space in several of the higher floors in the building. We ate lunch at Pizza Hut and then headed outside. The building is located across the street from the Saigon Post Office and Notre Dame Cathedral.

Diamond Plaza

HCMC Post Office

Post Office Interior

Front of Notre Dame

Rear of Notre Dame

This afternoon we made a trip to the War Remnants Museum. It is a museum of pictures and artifacts from the Vietnam War. The boys had passed by it and wanted to go there because there are all kinds of planes, tanks, and helicopters. We had gone here the last time we came to HCMC and I really didn't have it on my to-do list this time. As one might imagine, it is a rather lopsided depiction of the events of the war. The war is referred to throughout the museum as "The War of American Aggression". Once you overlook that aspect, there are tons of interesting things to see. There is a large section that is devoted to "Agent Orange" contamination and its effects on the Vietnamese people and American soldiers. The effects of the chemical are well documented and thousands of US soldiers are still being diagnosed with illnesses related to the chemical. This section is pretty gruesome and it contains jars with deformed fetuses and all kinds of pictures of deformities that have arisen in the population over the last 35 years. We didn't let the boys see any of those parts. We will save that for a later trip. The boys were fascinated with the mock prison that is on the sight. It depicts the prisons on Con Son Island that the South Vietnamese government used to imprison communist sympathizers. There are some spooky looking models and an actual guillotine used as late as 1960.

We ate supper tonight at a restaurant that is right down the street from our hotel called Barbecue Garden. The tables have a small gas grill in the center of them. Once you order your food, (we had a beef combination plate) they bring it out to you raw. You then grill it in the middle of the table. It was really good and cheap too. I think we might make another trip back before we leave.

Tomorrow morning we are taking a trip out to Cu Chi. This is an area where the Viet Cong had an extensive underground tunnel network from which they staged attacks on the US and ARVN. We will be going to the area where the tunnels were located and touring some of the operation. This is probably the last trip out of the city that we will make and it was the boy's choice of what to do for tomorrow.