Independence Palace, Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) - Pt1
This was a trip i made a few years ago however the place hasn't changed that I know of. There isn't a lot to write about it either that hasn't already been done, for example the wiki page here, which leaves little for me to do aside from show you what I found around there ...
Tell me anything about any of the images here, a fact, a manufacturer name, a history story ... for a full upvote ... comments away! Since it was entirely too easy to make a 'guess the place' post ....
The main palace, which has a long and storied history including being the spot where the Vietnam ended with a tank crashing through it's gates. A war that nobody won, especially not the Americans who should not have been there in the first place. That's a story for another time ... although much will be told with images I'm going to post in the next day or so.
A banquet hall within the 'palace'. If I may say so, looks like a spectacularly boring place to eat dinner.
Well, this is more interesting. Who can tell me who would have sat here and what they would have been doing? What's the red telephone for?
Perhaps Ho Chi Minh himself sat here negotiating with US president on the telephone to stop the bombs ... i really do need more info/research or should have photographed description tags, apologize for that.
Architecture is from just the 1960s. It has a wonderfully solid feel and feels not quite modern, but is modern architecture. I also like the way things were done to last here, and I dislike our very contemporary world of steel and glass only. There's something about solid bricks and stone that will never be matched.
Some seriously fancy antique and priceless designer furniture pieces in there, we're not allowed inside ...
No palace or even very large house would be complete without a proper cinema, would it now?
On another part of the building tour, perhaps hidden away slightly - what is going on here? Checking Facebook or WhaleShares posts at this station? No, they didn't exist back then. Trying to catch radio conversations in wartime, record them, and filter them for translation - intelligence work. Back in the day ....
War planning room, however it wasn't completely ready for tourists as you can see here a big ladder is in the way whilst they are setting things up. Actually this whole place hadn't been open to tourists all that long when we got there, if I remember correctly.
If you have ever worked in Indonesia or Vietnam, you'd be familiar with these 60s-70s style board meeting rooms. The mics on the table mean a phone line can be open for remote participants, and nobody need be forced to raise their voice in order to be heard. Very typical of the old style, I guess many have been modernized now however when I was working there I saw a lot like this - not just in palaces.
Coming up in part 2 - Outside! Tanks, guns, and choppers ...
