TOKIDOKI (NOMAD)

📍Cô Bắc Street
Khu Di tích Kháng chiến 30 (30th Resistance Zone Historical Site).

🇻🇳This isn’t a museum—it’s a preserved historic alley where revolutionary fighters operated during the resistance against the French in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The memorial honors:

• Tạ Thị Biên (Sáu Xuân), a local resistance leader who was killed there.
• The guerrillas and workers who used this area as a clandestine base.
• The residents of the neighborhood who sheltered and supported the resistance despite the danger.

⭐️The single gold star above the entrance is a common feature of Vietnamese historical monuments commemorating the revolutionary struggle.

This is Đình Nhơn Hòa, a Vietnamese communal house (đình)

A đình traditionally serves as the spiritual and cultural center of a neighborhood.

People come here to:

• Worship the village’s guardian deity (Thành Hoàng).
• Honor local ancestors and historical figures.
• Celebrate festivals and community ceremonies.
• Pray for prosperity, health, and protection.

The Chinese characters above the entrance read 寧和人, which correspond to Nhơn Hòa (“Peaceful Harmony” or “People Living in Harmony”).

🐅 The tiger relief is especially significant. In Vietnamese folk belief, the tiger (Ông Hổ, “Lord Tiger”) is a powerful guardian of the land and forests. At many đình in southern Vietnam, a tiger image protects the entrance by warding off evil spirits and symbolically guarding the sacred space.

On April 29, 1975, the day before the Fall of Saigon, CIA and USAID staffers
were evacuated from The Pittman Apartments (the former name of this building)
📍 22 Ly Tu Trong
An iconic photograph was taken by a Dutch photojournalist (shown at the end)
ℹ️ No signs anywhere, but if you want to go up and visit, walk into HTMC Tower and the
man at the desk will take 100,000 vnd/$3.80 and put you on the elevator to the 9th Floor.
He doesn’t accompany you. You can hang out in that historical space, as long as you like. 🚁

“The Pittman Apartments evacuation is one of the most iconic and misunderstood moments of the fall of Saigon. On April 29, 1975, as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the city, Dutch photographer Hubert van Es captured a photograph of evacuees climbing a ladder to an Air America Huey helicopter perched on a rooftop. For decades, the image was widely miscaptioned as showing the US Embassy. It was actually 22 Gia Long Street, the Pittman Apartments, a building that housed CIA officers and USAID staff.

The scene distills the chaos of Operation Frequent Wind, the final helicopter evacuation. The rooftop platform was an elevator shaft housing, never designed as a helipad, and the small Huey could take perhaps a dozen people at a time while a long line of Vietnamese evacuees, many of them employees and associates of the US mission, waited below. Most in that line never got out. Historians often point to the photo as a visual indictment of the abandonment of Vietnamese allies, and of the broader failure of US planning, since Ambassador Graham Martin had delayed full evacuation preparations, fearing panic.

Commentators have also noted the irony of the image’s afterlife: a picture of desperation and defeat became shorthand for the entire war’s end, and van Es spent years correcting the embassy misidentification. The building still stands in Ho Chi Minh City, now on a renamed street (Ly Tu Trong), and the rooftop has become a site of historical pilgrimage for journalists and veterans.”

*No signage anywhere. If you want to visit the rooftop, walk into HTMC tower and the security guard will collect 100,000 vnd/$3.81 and put you on an elevator to the top floor/rooftop, 9th floor.

August 2026