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Five minutes’ stroll north up Nam Ky Khoi Nghia from the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, a red flag billows proudly above the Reunification Palace. A whitewashed concrete edifice with all the charm of a municipal library, the palace occupies the site of the former Norodom Palace, a colonial mansion erected in 1871 to house the governor-general of Indochina. After the French departure in 1954, Ngo Dinh Diem commandeered this extravagant monument as his presidential palace, but after sustaining extensive damage in a February 1962 assassination attempt by two disaffected Southern pilots, the place was condemned and pulled down. The present building was named the Independence Palace upon completion in 1966, only to be retitled the Reunification Hall when the South fell in 1975. The reversion to the label “Palace” was doubtless made for tourist appeal. All visitors are required to join a group tour in one of several languages.
The tour
Before the tour you enter a movie room, where a potted account of Vietnamese history and the American War is screened half-hourly. Guides then usher you through the hall’s many chambers, proudly pointing out every piece of porcelain, lacquerwork, rosewood and silk on display. 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. 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.
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The taking of the presidential palace
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.”
