The Building Scene in Ho Chi Minh City

A man watches the street below from the center balcony of this colonial development.  Electrical wiring remains an ad hoc affair in HCMC.

The history of Vietnam has indelibly marked the city of Ho Chi Minh/Saigon both in its name and its architecture.  The country's long coastline provided plenty of opportunity for Chinese and other merchants to visit and settle.  Unfortunately, the Passengers did not get to visit the Vinh Nghiem Pagoda on this trip.  The French operated Vietnam as a colony for about one hundred years and transformed the city with Parisian boulevards and art deco tastes.  

The city's cathedral, built in 1880 and dedicated to Notre Dame with the new Diamond plaza tower in the background.

This art deco building along Nguyen Hue lives on as a deli restaurant called Kita Coffee.

What Vietnamese call the "American War" (what else should they call it?) destroyed plenty but left its own  cultural artifacts.  Latterly, the socialist state that emerged after 1975 had its own architectural preferences and uses for existing buildings, but it has not shunned development in recent decades.  The city changes; the city remains.  It all makes for great sights just walking around downtown District 1.  

I will save the pictures of the old opera for another post, but there are plenty of pictures to see after the jump.  Click the link below left.

The old Hotel de Ville is now the People's Committee Building.

Early twentieth-century shophouses similar to those in Singapore. These face the park near Reunification Palace.

The old presidential palace from 1966 became Reunification Palace after the fall of Saigon in 1975.  Banners around the park celebrated the 35th anniversary of a unified Vietnam.

A portrait of Ho Chi Minh watches over the interior of the city's main post office.  

The domineering 68-floor Bitexco (sound alert) Financial Tower rises behind the historic treasury and its square modern annex.  This summer the Vietnamese corporate giant announced further development plans in the city.

Banners outside an old apartment block across from the Continental Hotel on Dong Khoi protest a planned downtown development.

The Continental Hotel Saigon and the municipal theater also on Dong Khoi.