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.

House boats

Not far from the outskirts of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) these Cambodian refugees have made a life for themselves on the river. They have been here since the American War, as it is called in Vietnam.

War Image

There are a number of images from the Vietnam War that are burned into our psyche - the girl burnt with napalm running down the road, the helicopter evacuating Vietnamese from the roof of a CIA building during the fall of Saigon and the Buddhist monk who set fire to himself to protest the anti-Buddhist measures enacted by the South Vietnamese Catholic leader, Ngo Din Diem.

This is the egg-blue Austin sedan that ferried Thich Quang Duc to the Saigon intersection where he set himself ablaze in 1963. In this car was seen in the background of that horrific picture (as seen on the back of the wall behind the car)

This emotive relic is garaged in one of the monk's apartment buildings at the Thien Mu Pagoda outside Hue where he lived.