This is the famous 'reunification' palace, formerly the presidential palace that the VC tank ran through the gates of in 1975, to end the Vietnam/US war for good, sending the American troops packing - sharpish. We then went on to the official war musuem, where we witnessed the most horrific photos/facts of the war, at the same time our guide expertly crammed a hunded years of Vietnamse history into an hour. Fascinating, but a little comprehensive for the blog - in summary though it culminated in a very avoidable 8 year shambles, & unnecessary death of 4 million Vietnamese (more than half were civilians) & 60,000 UN troops (mostly US), that started with Lyndon Johnson (& argueably JFK before him), then Nixon sending troops in to a country/culture they had little idea about in order to surpress the threat & former day 'terrorism' (which at the time was Soviet Union communism), & create a 'western' style democracy that the people neither understood or particularly wanted. It costs billions, & the Americans eventually had to withdraw from a war that the voting public never wanted in the first place.....ring any bells? Lets hope that history does not repeat itself in the same bungled way in Iraq.
Saigon is largely 'new money', a city mostly demolished & rebuilt in the 80's, it is very concrete, clean & corporate, a symbol of this countries new 'free market', & growing economy that is still under communist rule - this political paradox of ideals does work...for the time being.
It is fun to enjoy the buzz here for a couple of nights - we're heading 100 kilometers south tomorrow for a night & day on a 'junk' on the meandering Mekong Delta, which will be our last escapade in SE Asia, before we head to Los Angeles on Sunday. Shall report back on Saturday night...
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