While the number of tourists visiting Ho Chi Minh City has continued to
increase annually (reaching 6.4 million in 2017, a 22.8% increase over
the previous year’s figures), the average visitor stay is just 2.6 days,
and more worryingly, according to a 2016 estimate by the Pacific Asia
Travel Association, only 6% of first-time visitors ever return.
Terrible, terrible terrible as my Father would say. Ain't my Saigon and this year when I visit Vietnam again, I'll have the car meet me at the airport and take me straight to the Dela where some semblance of the old still remains.
Saigon has Lost 56% of its Historic Buildings in 10 Years
In an exclusive excerpt from his latest book, Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn: Vanishing Heritage of Hồ Chí Minh City, historian Tim Doling discusses the city's threatened heritage architecture and what the city has lost so far.
In recent years, Ho Chi Minh City has experienced rapid economic growth, which, while beneficial to the lives of many, has impacted heavily on the city’s built heritage. Over the last five years in particular, the destruction of historic structures has reached an alarming rate — hardly a day now passes without a valuable old villa, apartment block or public building being razed to the ground.
A land use master plan for 2025, submitted in 2007 by the Japanese firm Nikken Sekkei Civil Engineering Ltd and approved in March 2008 by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, resolved that “the historic core of the city in Districts 1 and 3 should be protected.”
More @ Saigoneer
We have this problem in America too. The belief that a certain period of history should be preserved at the expense of all others. In reality, there is nothing worth preserving. 70 year old buildings arent "historic", they are just old and build using outdated materials and codes. The city population has grown. A thriving city needs to grow with it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the tourists don't return because one time was enough. For the sake of a few American tourists the city should be frozen as it was in 1968?
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The buildings they are referring too are French from 1860 to 1954.
DeleteSame difference. Small towns all over Virginia claim old brick warehouses are historic and must be preserved. The Fredericksburg historic district includes small wood frame shacks that no one would choose to live in today, but they cant be torn down without a tornado helping. The us army a few years back went on a demolition spree to remove ww2 wood structures before they got historic status. They were intended to be temporary shelters and lasted over 50 years. Old does not equal worthy. A preservation demand should be based on something more. Time passes. The future has as much right to the land as the past.
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Two wrongs don't make a right. Fortunately the Vietnamese commie government uses my old place and looks like it be be preserved.
Deletehttps://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2017/07/141-tran-quy-cap-new-picture.html