Saigon Sights

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Try to get a room at the back of the hotel if you are a light sleeper as traffic noise can be as much a problem here as anywhere else in Saigon. That said I spent a week in one of the first floor front rooms and found that I adjusted to the noise without any difficulty.

Breakfasts are a buffet affair and certainly sufficient to meet everyone’s needs. Although you can sit in the air-conditioned restaurant, it is much better to grab your meal and take it out into the central courtyard.

Interesting though it is, putting it into the same itinerary as Cu Chi is a bad idea – My Son is best viewed at lunchtime which means you will have a mad dash around the Cu Chi site either first thing in the morning or before it shuts in the afternoon.

Of the photo displays, one of the most thought provoking I reckon isn’t the photos of various battles or military views but of the photojournalists themselves, and the adventures they had and risks they took to get a story back home.

It will come as no surprise that the tour focuses on the period of the American War and includes the war room, communications room and a photo gallery of war images. But one of the most interesting things about the building is that it has been frozen in time. Many museums around the world focus on ancient history, but here you get to see the décor and technology from the sixties and early seventies, still maintained as if they shut up shop yesterday.

The tour takes you around many areas of the building, including the obligatory souvenir shop (prices are not bad) and a traditional music demonstration where you get to play the instruments – good fun but a bit out of place here in the palace.

The tour finishes after a walk through the basement, again if you don’t mind a good dose of propaganda then its worth the extra half hour to see the documentary which has some excellent archive footage.

We timed our visit a bit wrong and arrived late morning – unaware that the palace closes for lunch. You need at least an hour to do the tour plus an extra 30 minutes for the film.