#old saigon

Illustration | PTS | 2016

Illustration | Fine liners on paper | 2015

Map of Saigon

Photoset 2: details and interior shot A follow-up gallery with a few more details of this amazing historic house in Long Xuyên.

Photoset 1: exterior shots. We were back in Long Xuyen for a visit and a friend told us about this historic house located right smack dab in the middle of town near a popular park. I lived in Long Xuyen for five years and never heard about this place or saw it. The place is hidden behide a row of cafes, and the entrance is through a place where an old man sells coffee. The coffee seller's grandfather built the house in 1926, he told me. He went on to elaborate that the house was confiscated by the government in 1975 and was only recently returned to the family. The house sits empty now except for when death anniversaries or other family events take place. If you go there to take pictures, the old man asks that you buy a cup of coffee for 10,000 VND (less that $0.50), and I was only too happy to oblige.

I was walking downtown last month, and happened to glance down at an old sewer cover, looking for the "Saigon Direction D'Artillerie" text that I've been spotting around town. However, for the first time, I saw some different text. The imprint on this one reads: Saigon Construction Navales, with a date in the 1870s (the last digit is very worn out). After consulting with Google Translate, the French "Construction Navales" is "shipbuilding" in English, thus likely placing the origin of this sewer cover in the historic Ba Son Shipyard. Sadly, Ba Son is in the midst of destruction in the name of progress, and relics such as this worn out piece of steel from the 1870s may be all that remain of one of the most historic areas in the city. This particular sewer/manhole cover is located on Mạc Thị Bưởi Street, between Nguyễn Huệ Boulevard and Đồng Khởi Street.

I snapped these photos well over a year ago while spending a weekend in Cần Thơ. The "Imprimerie de L'ouest," or Western Publishing House lettering is still clearing visible on this historic building in the downtown area. Interestingly, if you have $500 to spare, you can buy a book that was published here on rice cultivation in Indochina published in 1933 (in French, of course). Also, just with a quick Google search I found a reference to another book published here a year earlier, in 1932.