Museum sights in Vietnam
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Fine Arts Museum
A classic yellow-and-white building with a modest Chinese influence, the Fine Arts Museum, houses one of the more interesting collections in Vietnam, ranging from lacquer- and enamel-ware to contemporary oil paintings by Vietnamese and foreign artists. If that doesn’t sound enticing, just come to see the huge hall with its beautifully tiled floors. The 1st floor includes a display of officially accepted contemporary art: most of it is just kitsch or desperate attempts to master abstract art, but occasionally something brilliant is displayed here. Much of the recent art is for sale and prices are reasonable.
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History Museum
A must for the architecture more than the collection, the History Museum was formerly home to the École Française d’Extrême Orient in Vietnam. It is an elegant, ochre-coloured structure built between 1925 and 1932. French architect Ernest Hebrard was among the first in Vietnam to incorporate a blend of Chinese and French design elements in his creations, and this particular building remains one of Hanoi’s most stunning architectural showpieces.
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Museum Of Vietnamese Women
The Vietnamese women celebrated here are graceful, wily and strong as all hell. Among the fuzzy photos usually displayed in Hanoi museums are some fascinating artefacts, including homemade machetes, a knife with an explicit caption noting it slashed at an oppressor's neck and the ragtag garments worn by a female spy who pretended to be crazy. The top floor showcases beautiful textiles made by ethnic-minority women.
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War Remnants Museum
Once known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, the War Remnants Museum is consistently the most popular museum in HCMC with Western tourists. Many of the atrocities documented here were well publicised in the West, but rarely do Westerners have the opportunity to hear the victims of US military action tell their own stories.
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National Oceanographic Museum
Housed in a grand French-colonial building in the port district of Cau Da at the far south end of Nha Trang is the National Oceanographic Museum. It’s attached to the Oceanographic Institute founded in 1923, and signs direct you around the tanks of colourful live marine life and the 60,000 jars of pickled specimens that make up the collection. There are also stuffed birds and sea mammals and displays of local boats and fishing artefacts. Most of the signs have English translations, so a guide is unnecessary.
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Military Museum
Just a short distance from the History Museum is a small Military Museum devoted to Ho Chi Minh’s campaign to liberate the south. Inside is of minor interest, but some US, Chinese and Soviet war material is on display outdoors, including a Cessna A-37 of the South Vietnamese Air Force and a US-built F-5E Tiger with the 20mm nose gun still loaded. The tank on display is one of the tanks that broke into the grounds of Reunification Palace on 30 April 1975.
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Museum of Royal Fine Arts
The beautiful hall that houses the Museum of Royal Fine Arts was built in 1845 and restored when the museum was founded in 1923. The walls are inscribed with poems written in nom (Vietnamese script). The most precious artefacts were lost during the American War, but the ceramics, furniture and royal clothing that remain are well worth the visit. The outside courtyard has interesting ceremonial cannons, stone court sculptures and large brass bells and vats.
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Ho Chi Minh Museum
This museum is in the old customs house in District 4, just across Ben Nghe Channel from the quayside end of ÐL Ham Nghi. Nicknamed the ‘Dragon House’ (Nha Rong), it was built in 1863. The link between Ho Chi Minh and the museum building is tenuous: 21-year-old Ho, having signed on as a stoker and galley boy on a French freighter, left Vietnam from here in 1911 and thus began 30 years of exile in France, the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere.
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Viet Nam Military History Museum
Vietnamese military history is not a conventional matter of tanks and battalions, which is why this museum is so engrossing. Exhibits include ample evidence of Vietnamese resourcefulness: bamboo spikes, crudely tinkered firearms, buffalo horns, crazy-looking torpedoes. Quality photos get you behind Viet Minh lines. Outside the building, an artistic heap of B-52 wreckage is worth a walk-around, and be sure to go to the top of the Flag Tower.
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Diep Dong Nguyen House
Built for a Chinese merchant in the late 19th century is Diep Dong Nguyen House. The front room on the ground floor was once a dispensary for thuoc bac (Chinese medicine); the medicines were stored in the glass-enclosed cases lining the walls. The owner's private collection of antiques - which includes photographs, porcelain and furniture - is on display upstairs. Two of the chairs were once lent by the family to Emperor Bao Dai.
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Crémaillère Railway Station
Dalat’s pretty train station is now largely decorative. The cog-railway linked Dalat and Thap Cham from 1928 to 1964, then closed because of VC attacks. A short section of the track to Trai Mat village has been running since 1997 and the government has said that it will restore the rest of the line. If completed this would provide a great tourist link to the main north–south lines.
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Ton Duc Thang Museum
This small, seldom-visited museum is dedicated to Ton Duc Thang, Ho Chi Minh’s successor as president of Vietnam, who was born in Long Xuyen, An Giang province, in 1888. He died in office in 1980. Photos and displays illustrate his role in the Vietnamese Revolution, including a couple of very lifelike exhibits that represent the time he spent imprisoned on Con Son Island.
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General Museum Complex
The General Museum Complex is housed in an exquisite building once a school for princes and the sons of high-ranking mandarins. It combines, in an odd juxtaposition, a pagoda devoted to archaeology, a small Natural History Museum and a building devoted to the 'movement of revolutionary struggle and anti-French colonialism resistance war'. There's a tank collection out front.
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Khanh Hoa Museum
This sleepy local museum features displays of Cham statues and artefacts of the ethnic minorities in the province. The Uncle Ho room features several of Ho Chi Minh’s personal effects, such as clothing and the microphone with which he made his famous independence speech in Hanoi on 2 September 1945.
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Ho Chi Minh Museum
Despite its huge grounds, this museum is typically unenlightening for a site venerating Ho Chi Minh. At the front is a display of the usual US, Soviet and Chinese weaponry. Hidden behind the Party buildings are a replica of Ho Chi Minh’s house in Hanoi and a museum about him.
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Can Tho Museum
The enormous, well-presented Can Tho Museum has exhibits of the history of Can Tho resistance during foreign rule as well as displays on the culture and history of the province. There’s a life-size pagoda and ample English signage.
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Museum of Ho Chi Minh City
Housed in a grand neo-classical structure built in 1886 and once known as Gia Long Palace (later, the Revolutionary Museum), the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City is a singularly beautiful and impressive building.
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Museum of Ho Chi Minh City
Housed in a beautiful grey neoclassical structure, the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City was built in 1886 and has displays of artefacts from the various periods of the Communist struggle for power in Vietnam.
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Ho Chi Minh Museum
On display at the Ho Chi Minh Museum are photographs, some of Ho Chi Minh's personal effects, and documents relating to his life and accomplishments. All have English captions.
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Hoi An Museum of History & Culture
Housed in the Quan Am Pagoda, the Hoi An Museum of History & Culture provides a sampling of pre-Cham, Cham and port-era artefacts, much of it ceramics.
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Haiphong Museum
The Haiphong Museum, in a splendid colonial building, concentrates on the city’s history; some of the displays have English translations.
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