FITO (MUSEUM OF TRADITIONAL VIETNAMESE MEDICINE)

The Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Pharmacy (Thuan An Town, Binh Duong Province) is a large (over 2000 m2) museum in southern Vietnamese architectural style. It is located in front of the Fito Pharma factory on the 13th highway – this is just about 30 minutes by car from the HCM city center. There is a parking lot for cars and buses.

The Reception room is located near the museum doors. This is where the museum tour starts and finishes. The tour is about 90 minutes long and starting from a visiting of the museum, then you visit the Fitô Pharma factory.

Fito museum consists of 14 rooms dedicated to the traditional Vietnamese pharmacy.

The museum showcases 5,000 historical documents and paintings of herbs and medicinal plants, as well as tools for weighing, grinding and making herbal medicine. Tours are available wherein visitors will be introduced to how oriental medicine began a century ago until it revolutionized to state-of-the-art manufacturing today.

Vietnam’s hot and humid tropical weather is conducive to the rapid growth of herbs. There are 1,300 medicinal plant species that have been discovered in the country, based on the records of the Health Ministry. Since more than 2,000 years ago, hundreds of these herbs have been used for medical remedies that have been later used in health care, disease prevention and treatment.

Herbal medicine is so abundant in Vietnam that it’s currently manufactured under the World Health Organization. There is an abundance of medicine shops and clinic all over the country. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, they have even become a tourist destination wherein visitors buy herbal medicine either for medical purposes or souvenir, or both.

Opening hours: Monday – Saturday from 8:30 AM till 5:00 PM.