Saigon’s most famous swimming pool is perhaps that of the *Cercle Sportif Saigonnais, a huge sporting facility on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai that was built in the 1900s for the city’s rich to frolic in every weekend. For residents living in Tan Binh District, however, northwards of the Cercle Sportif, the Cong Hoa Swimming Pool was the real icon of their childhood memories.
Established in the early 1960s, Cong Hoa was a special swimming pool built for American servicemen, but it was also open for locals hoping to escape the summer heat. The building was your standard pool, shallow on one side for younger guests and novice swimmers and deeper on the other. The pool also featured a four-story diving platform, which was dismantled in recent decades. Cong Hoa, along with Yet Kieu and Lao Dong, forms an important part of old Saigon's piscine culture.
The photos in this collection were taken by American soldier Tom Robinson in 1965 during his tour in Vietnam. The pool is now part of the Cach Mang Thang 8 Cultural and Sport Club and is open to swimmers of all walks of life.
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Virginia and Emily left to right.
*I never went to Cong Hoa for some reason but did go to the Cercle Sportif below and the two at the Embassy below that.
Virginia and Emily left to right.
At the Phu Lam Signal Battalion, we had our own swimming pool.
ReplyDeleteI went swimming there on Christmas Day, just so I could write to my folks and say I did that!
The Phu Lam Signal Battalion compound was a suburb of Saigon, located on QL-4, within sight of Ton Son Nhut Air Force Base, and close to Cho Lon, so I could visit downtown Saigon at least twice a week.
Today, the compound is still there, operated in Top Secret by the Army of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, and no American war veterans are permitted to visit.
But, posted on the Internet, there are photographs taken from outside the main gate, and a satellite view of the compound is visible on Google Earth.
The veterans of the Phu Lam Signal Battalion have a web site that you can visit.
http://phulam.com/
Thanks.
DeleteThose are fabulous photos. And I am unceasingly shocked when I see a comfortable, pleasant, and seemingly safe scene of Vietnam during that era. In my mind the entire region was aflame and in the grip of subversive violence, mostly because that was the propaganda of the day. And while horrific violence and tragedy would soon overtake the people and place, post '75, the uninformed civilians like me were blind to the truth of what Vietnam was and what it became.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
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