Inside The Reunification Palace.

The five-storey 95 room palace and all its contents remain intact as it was found that day – to their credit!! And it is now a memorial to a past way of life.

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I’m off again for work, this time to Mt Hagen up in the Highlands of PNG, for a week. I used to travel through here when we lived in Tabubil in the late 1990s, so am looking forward to going back.

I will leave you with these interiors of the palace while I am gone and post again next weekend.

The Reunification Palace

Of all the places I saw in Vietnam this is the one that held the most vivid memories for me. I have seen this building so often over the years and it was so important that I visited it on our trip.

This is the former Presidential Palace of South Vietnam today known as Dinh Thong Nhat (The Reunification Palace). On 30 April 1975 communist tanks crashed through the palace’s wrought iron gates and overthrew the South Vietnamese Government.

In the park-like grounds is a tank similar to the one that crashed through the gates. The original one is now in Hanoi.

Notre Dame - Saigon style

Notre Dame (Duc Ba) Cathedral with its 56 m bell towers that hold six bells weighing nearly 30 tons, rises over Paris Square in downtown Saigon. It stands across from The Post office (last post). French architect Jules Bourand designed the cathedral and it was completed in 1890 .

You can still see bullet holes in the facade, and in 2005 people flocked to the square with rumours the Virgin Mary was shedding tears.

This young couple had their photos taken outside the church.