Reunification Palace

Reunification palace has braved through several wars with Vietnam. It was invaded by the French and was named as Norodom Palace then. And was also invaded by the Japanese after the Japanese has defeated the French and became the office of Japanese colonists. In 1955, after Ngo Dinh Diem overthrew the head of the Republic of Vietnam, it renamed the Norodom Palace to Independence Palace. In November 1975, after the negotiation between the communist North and South Vietnam was successful, the provisional government renamed to the Reunification Palace now.


During the visit in the palace, I noticed that there are a lot of rooms where each are beautifully decorated and looked grand. I have learnt that each room is for different purposes. They have the command room, international reception room, credentials presenting room, library, entertainment room, cinema and lots more. International reception room is where the presidents received ambassadors and foreign ministers. Credential presenting room is for the credentials who are the leader of the country. There is also a cinema for showing documentary. Beside the cinema, there is a landing bay for helicopters. Most interesting is the war command room, with its huge maps & old communication equipments. This is the first time I see so many old communication equipments. I also call the command room as the map room where there is many different countries map which include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, etc.

Some pictures of the rooms:







In the palace, I saw elephant legs and some animal heads. Later, I found out that in the past, the King would order his men to cut these animal parts and offered to the Kings of other countries or some of their special guests as gifts.



The Vietnamese believed that the roads in front of the palace represent an arrow pointing directly to the palace are not a good sign. Thus in order to neutralise the bad sign, they built a big round grass patch with fountain in front of the palace. At the basement of the palace, they believed that there was a “dragon head” and further away from the palace, there was a “dragon tail”. This was not a good sign either; thus, a statue of a lotus flower with a turtle below the flower will be built directly on top of the “tail” to subdue the dragon. However during the war, it was destroyed. That is the reason why the capital of Vietnam was changed to Hanoi instead of HCMC.


I was quite surprised that actually in this palace, there is “feng shui” as I thought only the Chinese would believe in such things, thus, this have also shown that the Vietnamese was influenced to a certain extent by the Chinese culture during the Chinese Occupation.


The trip to reunification palace has allowed me to know more about the Vietnam history. From the 1st century where the country is under Chinese occupation till when the Soviet Union collapsed and Vietnam started to open up. During this long period, I think that Vietnam has grew stronger and stronger up till today where the GDP growth rate at above 8% which is even faster than Singapore.