OUTRAGEOUS PHOTO LIE

The 'Dragon House' on Saigon's waterfront. Originally French built, now it's Ho's legacy.

I decide that if I am to really understand Vietnam, I should make a visit to a place down by the Saigon River. Here sits the Ho Chi Minh Museum, dedicated to the old communist himself, Ho Chi Minh. Located in the old French colonial customs building called the Dragon House, it’s appropriately named, since I see dragon decorations across the rooftop.

Statue of young Ho, outside the museum.

Outside stands a statue, depicting a young and beardless Ho Chi Minh. At that time he was known as Nguyen Tat Thanh; he hadn’t changed his name to Ho Chi Minh yet. (He changed his name several times during his life.) It was on this very river front in 1911, that he boarded a boat to leave Saigon, not to return to Vietnam for decades. Most Americans will be surprised to learn, that the next year he even lived in New York for a while. There in the Big Apple, the future president of North Vietnam, and future enemy of the USA, worked as a mere baker. This stay in the states was long before Ho became a revolutionary opposed to the US. It was only later when he moved to France that he would embrace communism. While in New York, he developed a taste for American cigarettes, which he smoked for years afterward.

America's great enemy. Ho loved American cigarettes!

Almost unreconisable, this is Ho as a young man.

Ho never spent much time here in Saigon, since his family was from farther north. Since there are more interesting things to see about Ho in Hanoi, I spend little time in this museum, that's almost void of visitors. Perhaps this is due to the current lack of revolutionary fervor for communism. Another possible reason, is that this isn't the only museum in Vietnam dedicated to old Uncle Ho. There are several of these Ho Chi Minh museums throughout the country! Talk about overkill.

Photo of US troops in Vietnam hanging in Saigon's Ho Chi Minh Museum

What does deserve mention here, is the most ridiculous attempt at propaganda I’ve ever seen. (And that's saying a lot!) Among many photos displayed on the walls, one has an enlarged black and white photo that many students that studied the Vietnam War will recognize. Previously published in an American book, the photo shows US Special Forces soldiers after they returned from a successful combat mission in Vietnam. They wear camouflage fatigues, and carry assault rifles. Some have bandoliers of ammunition across their shoulders, others have had their faces partially blackened for night fighting. Most are smiling, and holding up a North Vietnamese flag that they have just captured in battle.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum took a copy of that same photo, and hung it up in this museum, with this outrageous caption: 

How ridiculous.