Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [62]
Spookily unchanged from its working days, much of the building’s interior is a time capsule of sixties and seventies kitsch: pacing its airy banqueting rooms, conference halls and reception areas, it’s hard not to think you’ve strayed into the arch-criminal’s lair in a James Bond movie. Before the tour you enter a movie room, where a potted account of Vietnamese history and the American War is screened half-hourly. Then guides usher you through the hall’s many chambers, proudly pointing out every piece of porcelain, lacquerwork, rosewood and silk on display. Most interesting is the third floor, where, as well as the presidential library (with works by Laurens van der Post and Graham Greene alongside heavyweight political tomes), there’s a curtained projection room, and an entertainment lounge complete with tacky circular sofa and barrel-shaped bar. Nearby, a set of sawn-off elephant’s feet add an eerie touch to the decor. Perhaps the most atmospheric part of the building is the basement and former command centre, where wood-panelled combat staff quarters yield archaic radio equipment and vast wall maps.
Adjoining the western edge of the Reunification Palace’s grounds is Cong Vien Van Hoa Park, a municipal park whose tree-shaded lawns are pleasant for a stroll and heave with life each Sunday. During the colonial era, the park’s northernmost corner was home to one of the linchpins of French expat society, the Cercle Sportif, a Westerners-only sports club where the colons gathered to swim and play tennis before sinking an aperitif and discussing the day’s events. Today it functions as the Workers’ Sports Club.
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Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City | The Reunification Palace and around |
The taking of the presidential palace
The Reunification Palace is so significant to the Vietnamese because it was the storming of its gates by a tank belonging to the Northern Army, on April 30, 1975, that became the defining moment of the fall of Saigon and the South. These days two tanks stand in the grounds as a reminder of the incident.
Of the many Western journalists on hand to witness the spectacle, none was better placed than English journalist and poet James Fenton, who conspired to hitch a ride on the tank that first crashed through the gates: “The tank speeded up, and rammed the left side of the palace gate. Wrought iron flew into the air, but the whole structure refused to give. I nearly fell off. The tank backed again, and I observed a man with a nervous smile opening the centre portion of the gate. We drove into the grounds of the palace, and fired a salute. An NLF soldier took the flag and, waving it above his head, ran into the palace. A few moments later, he emerged on the terrace, waving the flag round and round. Later still, there he was on the roof. The red and yellow stripes of the Saigon regime were lowered at last.”
Inside the palace, Duong Van Minh (“Big Minh”), sworn in as president only two days before, readied to perform his last presidential duty. “I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you,” he said to General Bui Tin, to which the general replied: “Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have.”
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Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City | The Reunification Palace and around |
The War Remnants Museum
A block above the park, at 28 Vo Van Tan, the War Remnants Museum (daily 7.30– noon & 1.30–5pm; 15,000đ) is the city’s most popular attraction but not for the faint-hearted. Unlike