HCMC / Reunification Palace
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
55
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Either way, it's ace. It was built in the 1960s on the site of a previous palace that had been built by the French during their occupation. Since the end of the Vietnam war it has been used only for state occasions since, and is pretty much preserved as it was when the North took over in 1975.
This is why it's so good. It's like, to use a cliche, stepping back in time. It's also interesting to see how the big cheeses lived it up in the 1960/70s
Reunification Palace
. The Palace is big. It has high ceilings wide corridors and enormous open spaces. There's a series of sitting rooms, a cinema, a gambling room, the president's wife's sitting room where her mates would come round for a knit, presumably. No swimming pool, mind. If I had been President I would have made sure I got one of those. The bedrooms however were crap; like a motel that sorely needed redecoration.The best bit is the basement. It stops being so palatial down there, and a maze of corridors connect plain rooms with wooden walls and concrete floors. These are the war rooms, and again have been left as they were. Some rooms have walls covered by maps, some have old radios or massive machines covered in lights and dials, like an old sci-fi film. All of them have banks of 1960 style phones.
A big feed in the evening, and a few beers again. We leave HCMC early tomorrow morning, Kyle and Stephanie are hanging around for a few days. We've been travelling together since we met tubing in Vian Vieng nearly a month ago. We'll probably be at Angkor Wat at the same time in about a week,
