The Tour
The city’s wartime history, including the parts that are easy to walk past.
Ho Chi Minh City wears its history lightly, and most visitors see the headline sites without ever connecting them. This morning does the opposite. You start at the War Remnants Museum with the photographs, artefacts and personal accounts, then walk to the Thich Quang Duc memorial and hear the story behind the monk’s protest in 1963 and what it set in motion.
From there it gets less obvious: a concealed weapons bunker, hidden in plain sight in a residential street, and the Saigon Commando Martyrs' Memory Space, which covers the covert operations run in the city and the people who ran them. You finish at Independence Palace, in the historic rooms and the underground command facilities, talking through the events of April 1975 where they happened. Your guide is local, which is what makes the difference on a subject like this.
