{"id":14618,"date":"2013-03-29T04:45:48","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T04:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/?p=14618"},"modified":"2013-04-19T12:28:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T12:28:36","slug":"vietnam-photo-tour-day-onesaigon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/vietnam-photo-tour-day-onesaigon\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam Photo Tour: Day One, Saigon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2013 Vietnam Photo Tour is off and running with 10 enthusiastic photographers, eager to explore this amazing country. We spent our first day, cameras in hand, wandering around Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City as it’s now called). We visited many of Saigon\u2019s icons including the spectacular turn-of-the-century Colonial French Post Office, the War Remnants Museum, the turn of the century Opera House and the Catholic Cathedral in the Dong Khoi Street area. We also explored Binh Tay Market and Thien Hau Pagoda (Cantonese pagoda) in Cho Lon district.<\/p>\n

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\nIn the War Remnants Museum we viewed a powerful collection of photographs taken by 134 international journalists who were killed during the Vietnam war, including\u00a0Henri Huet, Dickey Chapelle,\u00a0<\/strong>and Larry Burrows. The exhibit is called “Requiem” and was donated by the state of Kentucky.<\/p>\n

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Above is a photograph that became one of the most remembered images of the fall of Saigon, capturing the last chaotic days of the Vietnam war. Most people believed that it showed desperate Americans crowding on to the roof of the United States Embassy to board a helicopter because that’s what the picture caption usually says, but in fact, that “usual caption” is wrong and it was not the caption originally written by Hubert Van Es, the United Press International photographer who shot it on April 29th<\/sup> 1975. The photograph if of an apartment building at 22 Gia Long Street. Below, you can see what the building (which is still standing), looks like today (my photo taken from the opposite side of the building). The \u201chelicopter evacuation\u201d photo by Hubert Van Es, along with many other iconic photos of the Vietnam war have stories behind them, that we might not necessarily be aware of.<\/p>\n

I’m planning on doing a blog post to discuss several of these particular photos, so stay tuned, but please be patient, as I have limited time to get things done while I’m busy leading this year’s Vietnam Photo Tour.<\/p>\n

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At the post office we encountered, retired postal worker Doung Van Ngo. Van Ngo spends his days translating and writing letters for folks who are unable to do so. He\u2019s famous here at the post office and known lovingly as \u201cthe little corporal\u201d.\u00a0 Van Ngo has been performing this service for over 20 years. You can read more about him here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The 2013 Vietnam Photo Tour is off and running with 10 enthusiastic photographers, eager to explore this amazing country. We spent our first day, cameras in hand, wandering around Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City as it’s now called). We visited many of Saigon\u2019s icons including the spectacular turn-of-the-century Colonial French Post Office, the War Remnants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[183,184,182,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14618"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15088,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618\/revisions\/15088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}