Dam Sen Cultural Park

This guide to Dam Sen Cultural Park in Ho Chi Minh City starts in the mud, with ordinary residents of District Eleven wading into a waterlogged marsh between 1976 and 1978 to drain it by hand at the city's call. That mobilized labor, tree by tree over two years, turned lotus swamp the locals called Đầm Sen into thirty hectares that finally welcomed its first visitors in 1983.