This visit was also motivated by research – whenever I go on a trip somewhere one of the places I spend time searching is at Flickr as I figure it is likely that someone has been to the most visually interesting places everywhere and likely taken photos & uploaded them, so I put Vietnam into Flickriver and idly noted anything that looked interesting… This process motivated me to go to Ha Long Bay (which I’ll post some photos of once I’ve dealt with the timelapse I shot there) but one set of photos from Ho Chi Minh City stopped me in my tracks. WTF was this place? The basement of the Reunification Palace? I am SO going there!
So this palace was originally known as the Independence Palace and was the home and workplace of the president of South Vietnam before and during the Vietnam War. It was designed by architect Ngo Viet Thu and is a fantastic, grand building. But what makes it fascinating to visit now is that at 10:45 on 30th April 1975 a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the main gate ending the Vietnam War, and the building has been immaculately preserved in that state ever since!
Walking around this building you could not but help try and imagine what had occurred here….
Interesting to note they chose a Pleyel grand piano, also Debussys favourite piano – I would LOVE to have had a play in such a beautiful reverbant space….
Note sure what this was used for, but it looks like what I imagine David Lynch’s screening theatre would look like….
But for all the dramatic luxury upstairs, what I found most fascinating was the basement! These windowless rooms were obviously the engine room for communications and planning…
There were too many tourists to do much recording here, so I shot a lot of photos and video but I did stop & record a gorgeous huge sinister rumble from the air con in the basement…. Hit play before you scroll down, the drone suits the photos!
BASEMENT AIR CON RUMBLE by timprebble
I said don’t push the red button!!!
