Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Medicine

A bit of a delicate start to the morning following the long night before but we dragged ourselves out and rode to the Museum of Traditional Medicine. This was a highly rated museum and although full of artefacts, it didn’t go into much detail. It was more of a showcase without much explanation. Nonetheless, good to see and understand how important various herbs and plants had been for historic medicine up until relatively recently. It was also interesting to understand how Vietnam and China were effectively competing against one another in the medical field and therefore built on each other’s success to become one of the global leading countries in medicine, although this could be self proclaimed. Lastly and where historic medicine perhaps looses some of its credibility considering modern day treatment is the significance of two fundamental factors. One, ‘Yin and Yang’ describing the importance between opposite human states such as hot-cold, deficiency-excess etc. Two, describing the importance of the five elements within the body. Major organs are grouped into the elements of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. These five elements have close connections, which means if a person has one weak element, it will lead to an excess of another one and must be treated accordingly. Not sure I’m sold, then again this isn’t my area. Interesting.

After the museum, we left for the Bitexco Skydeck to watch the sunset. Ho Chi Minh has a few observation points, the Bitexco tower at 264m high and more impressively the Landmark 81 at 461m high (Vietnams tallest building). We opted for the Bitexco tower as this looks out over central Ho Chi Minh (District 1), where we had stayed. The views were good although due to lower air quality, the fringes of the city blurred into a white haze quite quickly. Not quite as impressive as the previous night, the sunset was still good to see however.

We walked past a more up-market looking clothes market so stopped off where Jess got a top. Jess was absolutely delighted to be told she was a size large by Asian standards after being measured up! In the market grounds caged away was an archery class going on and just outside in the car park was a martial arts class… coincidence.Read more