Southern Women’s Museum
Southern Women’s Museum (also call Nam Bo Women’s Museum) is a familiar destination for the locals and foreigners when travelling in Ho Chi Minh City. The Nam Bo Women’s Museum is opened in 1985 as a center for educational and cultural activities, traditional meetings, scientific seminars and cultural exchanges for women.
This building once belonged to Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Director of the General Police Department under the former Saigon government. In 1984, it was turned into the Traditional House of Nam Bo Women. Later, another four-storey building was added and the whole complex became the Southern Women’s Museum.
The first floor in Southern Vietnam Women’s Museum is the most accessible to foreign visitors, with excellent signage in English and French, and displays of traditional crafts and ao dai, a Vietnam’s elegant national dress. The other two floors feature photos and stories of notable Vietnamese women in history, as well as the role of women during wartime. Most signage is in Vietnamese.
The Museum aims to preserve and highlight the fine traditions of women. The Southern Women’s Museum is now saving and displaying more than 16.000 artifacts, documents and pictures. There are more than 10.000 books in the library. The exhibitor includes 3 floors with 8 rooms and the following subjects: Women Movement-Vietnam Women Union Assembly, Vietnamese Women Tradition, Commemorating Ho Chi Minh President, Southern Women Daily Life, The houses in 3 areas of the South: the Eastern, Western, and highland and so on.
In addition to the exhibition area, the museum also has a 800-seat hall, a movie theater, a library, and a storage room. Recently, the Museum opens a new showroom is called “Southern women in preserving and promoting the national cultural identity”, displaying relics of the worship of the grandmother (Mieu), costume of ethnic women (South), traditional trade villages (South), etc.
The Southern Vietnam Women’s Museum is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of Vietnamese women. This Museum is a great place to visit when you want to get a deeper and informative insight into Vietnamese culture and history. There are a lot of collections of clothes and artefacts in here that depicts the life of women of different ages. The exhibits are clear to make you understand the way of their living during the famous Vietnamese war. Apart from all these, you will get to buy different articles from the stores at Southern Women’s Museum. Besides, the visitors do not need to pay any taxes here.