Ho Chi Minh City: war, markets and rooftop cafés

The War Remnants Museum displays war reporter photographs, United States military vehicles left in the city and an entire section dedicated to the effects of Agent Orange on the civilian population, with a direct and unfiltered presentation.

The Notre-Dame Cathedral, built with bricks imported from Marseille at the end of the nineteenth century during the French colonial period, still preserves its twin towers in neoromanesque style in the heart of district 1.

The Ben Thanh market, covered since 1914, sells souvenirs, spices and Vietnamese street food side by side, with a clock on the main facade that has become the unofficial symbol of the city.

The rooftop cafés of the center, created in old condominiums from the sixties with narrow stairs and improvised elevators, offer from above a view of the continually growing skyline of the financial district.

The War Remnants Museum and rooftop cafés tell two vastly different moments of the same city, separated by just two generations yet almost unrecognizable from one another.

Ben Thanh, between them, continues selling everything for over a century, indifferent to which version of the city surrounds it at any given time.