On September 3, 1979, 10 years after President Ho Chi Minh passed away, HCM City authorities decided to establish a place to commemorate him. The selected spot was a waterfront building called Nha Rong. It was at this wharf that 21-year-old Nguyen Tat Thanh boarded a ship for France in 1911 and then lived in many other countries. Thirty years later, he returned to Vietnam with the name Ho Chi Minh to be a leader of the national liberation movement.Nha Rong is the name that Vietnamese used to call the office of France’s Messageries Maritimes Company. This magnificent building was built in 1863, four years after the French seized Saigon. It has original and strange architecture. Its roof has the elegant beauty of the roof of a Chinese pagoda with two dragons competing for a fireball. As there are two dragons on the roof, Vietnamese call the building Nha Rong.
Nha Rong is located at the three-way intersection of the Saigon River and Ben Nghe Canal. On the far side of the canal, there was a rice field on a high area. At that time, there was no bridge over the canal, so people went to Nha Rong by boat. More than 20 years later, the Messageries iron bridge was built to connect Adran Street, now Ho Tung Mau Street, with the far side of the canal.
Messageries Maritimes was a big sea transport company and was established in 1851. It was headquartered in Marseilles and had shipping routes to America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Many ships of the company were named after Vietnam’s geographical places such as Annam, Tourane, Sontay, and Haiphong. Nha Rong Port was the stopover for ships going from Marseilles to Hong Kong and Yokohama.
Many postcards were printed with the images of ships and ports used by Messageries Maritimes and there were paintings of the company’s ships in storms. Nha Rong appeared in many postcards for decades. Later it was printed on the Vietnamese 50,000-dong banknote. Together with Ben Thanh Market, Nha Rong is one of the two symbols of HCM City.
After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, Nha Rong was repaired to serve as a house of commemoration, then as the Ho Chi Minh Museum in the south. After Nha Rong was restored, the two dragons on the roof no longer faced each other: one looked east and the other looked west. On the roofs of palaces or pagodas, dragons sometimes confront each other, look outside or look back. Vietnam has been in the situation of two dragons fighting each other several times. Most dramatically, it was when the Trinh and Nguyen fought each other and the period after the Geneva Accords of 1954.
Trinh and Nguyen Lords competed for power, so Vietnam was divided into the North and the South, with the Gianh River in Quang Binh Province as the border. Once, after the signing of Geneva Accords in 1954, Vietnam was divided at Latitude 17. Ngo Dinh Diem’s Government in the south, supported by the U.S., refused to hold a general election to reunify the country. The 20-year war that followed caused much human misery and slowed the building of the country.
On the bank of Ben Nghe Canal opposite Nha Rong, the French erected a mast to signal the travel of ships and boats. Vietnamese called it Thu Ngu Flag Pole, which remains. Nearby is La Pointe des Blagueurs for people who were fond of joking. This was an ideal place to sit and chat and watch the ships travel on the Saigon River, enter and leave Ben Nghe Canal, or berth at Nha Rong Port.
TOURISM NEWS
A hand for the poor in Dak Lak
With the aim of helping the poor community in Dak Lak Province, on May 26-27, Saigontourist Holding Company, in cooperation with the Dak Lak Fatherland Front Committee, Dak Lak Tourism Joint Stock Co., and HCM City Volunteer Health Club, held the program “Saigontourist for the Community.” The program included visits, offering diagnosis and treatment, and distributing free medicine and presents to 720 households in Lak District’s Pongkrang, Krongno, Dakphoi and Daklieng communes. The participants of the program were over 50 young doctors of HCM City Volunteer Health Club.
According to Tran Hung Viet, Saigontourist deputy general director and the program’s organizing board chairman, Saigontourist always gives attention to charity works, contributing to eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. Annually, the company donates about VND4 billion to help people and households in need and give scholarships to poor, studious students, help those suffering from disasters, and build houses, hospitals and schools. “The program in Dak Lak was part of Saigontourist’s plan to join forces with society to improve social welfare and foster hunger elimination and poverty reduction,” said Viet.
Aiming to boost the charity work into the professional level, in October 2006, Saigontourist founded the organizing board of “Saigontourist for the Community” program with activities carried out every month, quarter and year, with the participation of the staff of the company and its affiliates.
Training for Saigontourist staff
In its 32 years of growth, Saigontourist knows well that to enhance its brand name it must focus on training its human resources. On May 23-24, Saigontourist held a training course titled “21st Century Leader Skills,” for 25 leaders of international hotels and travel companies directly under Saigontourist. The trainer was Jennifer D. Water, an expert who has experience in consultancy in the hospitality and tourism industry in Australia and with international organizations like Greenpeace. She works for Spectra Consulting and Training Company of Singapore.
In addition to organizing staff competitions to improve professional skills, Saigontourist also invites lecturers from international tourism training centers to give lectures as well as sending Saigontourist people overseas to get advanced knowledge in management, which has brought about encouraging consequences.
"From now on, we will encounter fierce competition from international brand names that are capital-rich and strong in management and advanced services. In this competition, Saigontourist has to assert its position as well as its strength on the basis of Saigontourist and Vietnamese technology. Therefore, human resources play a vital role as the key to success,” Saigontourist general director Nguyen Huu Tho said.
From: TRAN TAN MY (The Saigon Times Weekly)
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