From Hollywood starlets to scruffy trade union delegations, an unassuming reinforced concrete bunker under a central Hanoi hotel sheltered communist Vietnam’s most important wartime guests.
Tourists can visit the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, where POWs like US Senator John McCain were held
Sealed off and forgotten after hostilities ended in 1975, the dank subterranean passages were unearthed during recent renovations at the hotel, now favoured by foreign tourists and wealthy Vietnamese.
“I felt a little bit like Indiana Jones discovering the Temple of Doom or something,” said Kai Speth, general manager of the Metropole Hotel, describing when he first entered the seven-room bunker, which was knee-deep in water.
There were always rumours that the bunker – no more than 20 square metres in size – was under the swimming pool bar, he said.
“So I told the team when we were rebuilding the foundations of the bar: ‘Let’s dig a little deeper’.”
The bunker was built in 1968 when the hotel, then known as the Thong Nhat, was a drab, government-run establishment used by the communist authorities to house visiting delegations, including a string of prominent American anti-war activists.
Actress Jane Fonda and folk singer Joan Baez both used the shelter, with Baez recording a song in it during the Christmas bombings in December 1972, when the US dropped some 20,000 tonnes of ordnance in 11 days.
More than 1,600 civilians died in the attack, and Baez’s 21-minute recording Where Are You Now, My Son?, made in the concrete passages, captures some of the sounds of wartime Hanoi.
The bunker at the Metropole, which will be preserved in its original state and is open for tours for guests, is one of thousands of similar bomb shelters dug across Hanoi during the decades-long conflict.
Most have since been filled in, but one other famous site remains – behind the walls of Thang Long Citadel lies a bunker where former key leaders General Vo Nguyen Giap and President Ho Chi Minh once sheltered from bomb attacks.
While most of Vietnam’s war tourism industry is concentrated in the south – visitors to Ho Chi Minh City can visit the famous war museum and Cu Chi tunnels – signs of Hanoi’s wartime legacy abound if you know where to look.
A small plaque next to Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake marks the spot where US Senator John McCain was shot down as a navy pilot and dragged ashore to become a prisoner of war – one of 10 American planes to be downed by anti-aircraft gunners on just one day in 1967.
Tourists can also visit the so-called “Hanoi Hilton”, where American POWs like McCain were held. While much of the Hoa Lo Prison was demolished, sections of it, including the gatehouse, remain open as a museum.
In other parts of the city, the wartime history has been absorbed into the scenery. A small shrine on Yen Ninh-Hang Bun street marks the spot where French soldiers opened fire on a market killing dozens of civilians in an incident that is believed to have triggered the first Indochina War in 1946.
The name of the shrine means “deep hatred” in Vietnamese and was a popular word used during the war. But today this shrine is famous for another reason – delicious noodles.
For Bob Devereaux, an Australian diplomat stationed in Hanoi in 1975, wartime relics are important to help the younger generation – some 60 per cent of Vietnam’s population is under 35 – come to terms with the past.
In Vietnam, “anyone younger than 40 or so has no memory of war,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing for them to come and see what life was about.”