From Fine Art to No Class

The HCMC Fine Arts Museum.

For our weekly Saigon field trip, we decided to head downtown to check out the Fine Arts Museum of Ho Chi Minh City.  The museum does not have the largest collection nor does it possess any world-renowned pieces.  In fact, half of the draw is the old villa that houses the museum.  It was built in the 1920's and housed the richest man in Saigon (at the time).  The architecture is a mix of French Colonial and Chinese influence and the tiled floors and stained glass windows are still original furnishings. 

In our opinion, the highlight of the museum was the collection of art from soldiers during the American War.  We were interested to find that their sketches of the war often portrayed, 1) the soldiers and commoners as smiling and happy people and 2) a large majority of the soldiers as women.  Overall, we really enjoyed our time at the HCMC Fine Arts Museum.  For 50 cents, USD, we were able to spend an hour wandering the floors, checking out the collection, and staying away from the downpour outside.

Cyclo driver sculpture.

Adam being the statue that looks like Lord Voldemort.

A drawing from a soldier on the battlefield.

In less than 12 hours time, we went from experiencing the high class world of art to the no-class world of life at 4:30 am on the Saigon Canal.  This morning, our run started out a little shaky (literally) as Heidi noticed a large rat (later to be compared to a Great Dane) rummaging through the garbage piled along the canal.  Her screaming and running like a wild woman into the path of motorbikes caused Adam a minor heart attack.  There was not even time to recover before the second rat ran through the grass and onto the path where we were running.  At this freak out, Adam quickly changed places with Heidi to be able to intercept any further rat sightings.  The run only continued to digress from there as we saw not one, but two men defecating in public, as Heidi nearly stepped in a pile of human waste on the path, and to top it off -- a drunk 20-something decided to start peeing off the bridge (while laughing) as we ran under him. 

At this point, we decided to wrap our run up and remind ourselves which parts of Saigon we love which included cheap, delicious bowls of hot pho, strong black coffee, air-conditioned cafes, accessible public transportation, and cheap facials and massages.  And somehow, in between all that, we decided to forgive those-without-class and try our run all over again in the morning.