War Remnants Museum HCMC

For our last weekend in Ho Chi Minh, Sofia asked me if we could do something different, ie can we finally go to the place with the old planes that we see near our hotel when we're riding home in a taxi.

I was trying really hard to figure what it was, the War Remnants Museum was a good guess, and it's in the same area too, but I think it may be something else, with French Architecture. I guess we will never know since it's not easy looking for things or places in a not so English-speaking country, especially if you don't know what it's called.

Anyway, we went to the War Remnants Museum because it's walking distance to Jollibee in Pasteur street, the place where we wanted to have lunch after exploring the museum. I've already heard that the museum was quite graphic and it tells a good tale of the Vietnam side of the war and since I'm not really into such things, the plan was just to look at the old tanks and old planes and go. 

War Remnants Museum in District 1

It's quite busy on weekends.
Entrance Fee is 15,000VND (around SG$1 or Php34).
Children Sofia's age (4) can enter for free.

Army brat? with her elephant from our Cambodia backpacker trip.

Fif with her war face on.

Peace. Not War.

This tank was known as the King of the Battlefield.

Fif pretending to run away from the big tank chasing her.

A closer look.

I don't think I'm dressed properly for the army.

Mom and Fif.
She kept bugging me to enter the museum.

We went to the old planes next.

Old war chopper.

Check out the ammo!

Another old plane.

The curious little girl insisted on entering the Jail with the Tiger Cages.

The Guillotine Room. This is where they beheaded people.
Creepy.

These are the Tiger Cages.
They used to stuff prisoners in there so when they moved they'd get hurt.

We didn't want to enter this room with more graphic pictures on the walls.

This prison cell with the mock prisoner freaked out Sofia.
So finally she understood why I didn't want to go in.

I told her to sit on her stroller and close her eyes.

Since we were already there, we decided to take a quick look at the museum, making a conscious decision not to look at anything disturbing.

After the prison tour, I told Sofia to look at the Children's drawings of Peace.

The museum is mostly pictures of the war.
I didn't want to enter the exhibit on Aggression War Crimes.

They had this room which we also skipped.

The only one we wanted to enter was the room on Post-War Recovery.

It was connected to the Orange Room so we saw it anyway.

The museum has a second floor and a Louvre-inspired ceiling.
We didn't bother exploring it.

View of the old planes from the museum building.

No museum visit is complete without checking out the souvenir stores.

The funny thing is they were all stocked with pirated books
(still selling for around SG$6 or Php200).
I wonder where the source is.

We were done faster that expected so we just went to Jollibee to order take away and get Sofia a small snack.

Sofia loves Jollibee...

so this makes the perfect Post-War Museum snack.

Sofia with Jollibee.

It was to humid to sit outside,
but they did a have nice outdoor set-up beside the motorcycles parked.

It was a perfect lazy Saturday where we went to the shops till we got hungry, ate our Chicken Joy in the comforts of our hotel room, then we napped before getting our daily fix of Vietnamese Iced Coffee and then we went for another delicious dinner at Ngon. Perfect for our last weekend here. Just Saying.