This museum is a “charming clash of ideas and history,” according to Have Camera Will Travel. Housed in a yellow colonial-style building a block from Hanoi’s opera house, “its wide, tiled corridors are right out of 1950s Western government bureaucracy.” But if you’re interested in a “balanced view of Vietnam's revolutionary struggles” over recent centuries, “don't expect much from this classically one-sided museum,” says Duncan Forgan at AFAR. However, look for “a few amazing photographs” sprinkled between the random documents and dioramas.
“This is very much a museum of artifacts,” explains Have Camera Will Travel. Its glass showcases contain “everything from weapons and flags used by revolutionaries on the front lines to propaganda posters to the everyday utensils used by Vietnamese peasants.” Plus statues of Ho Chi Minh (“the scholar”), Ho Chi Minh (“the statesman”), and “various other revolutionary leaders” like Tran Phy.