Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Vietnam
AA-2026-DFE03A
On the image
The sign is bilingual and slightly apologetic about it, as zoo signs in colonial and post-colonial cities often were: Ngua Kim in Vietnamese, then the Latin, then the reassuring English gloss for the tourist who wandered in without knowing what he was looking at. He leans on the low wall in short sleeves and dark glasses, the universal uniform of the American abroad in that decade, whether he arrived on a military contract or a diplomatic one nobody printed on the photograph.
The wooden trellis behind him and the tin-roofed keeper's shed suggest a zoo built for a tropical climate and a modest budget, the kind of institution that survives wars mostly by being beneath their notice. Nobody photographs the wild ass itself, which is the real joke of the visit: the animal that justified the trip stays offstage, and the man leaning on the wall becomes the exhibit instead.
He has the look of someone killing an afternoon between more serious obligations, in a Saigon where afternoons like this were rationed and did not last.
The historian's note
The enclosure sign identifies the animal as Equus asinus, the Asiatic wild ass, with its Vietnamese common name Ngua Kim rendered above the Latin and an English translation below it, a trilingual labelling style typical of Vietnamese municipal institutions in the mid-twentieth century. The layout and materials are consistent with Saigon's municipal zoo and botanical garden, long known locally as Thao Cam Vien, one of the oldest continuously operating zoos in Southeast Asia, established in the nineteenth century and still functioning through the 1960s despite the escalating conflict in South Vietnam.
During this period the zoo remained open to the public, including the substantial population of American military and civilian personnel then stationed in and around Saigon, for whom it offered a rare and ordinary diversion amid wartime routine. The photograph documents that coexistence: a functioning civic institution, a foreign visitor in casual dress, and the low-cost wood-and-wire construction typical of tropical zoo enclosures of the era.
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American Visitor at the Asiatic Wild Ass Enclosure, Saigon Zoo, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-DFE03A. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-visitor-at-the-asiatic-wild-ass-enclosure-saigon-zoo-1960s.
@misc{aaAA2026DFE03A,
title = {American Visitor at the Asiatic Wild Ass Enclosure, Saigon Zoo, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-DFE03A},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-visitor-at-the-asiatic-wild-ass-enclosure-saigon-zoo-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - American Visitor at the Asiatic Wild Ass Enclosure, Saigon Zoo, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-DFE03A UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-visitor-at-the-asiatic-wild-ass-enclosure-saigon-zoo-1960s ER -
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