The Presidential Palace in Hanoi is a striking mustard-yellow mansion set in a large park just behind the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It was built by the French between 1900 and 1906 as the residence of the Governor-General of French Indochina, in a grand Beaux-Arts style with tall windows, balustrades and a sweeping drive. Today it is used for official receptions and state visits, so the building itself is closed to the public \u2014 but the gardens and the houses where Ho Chi Minh lived are open as a national relic site.<\/p>\n
After independence, Ho Chi Minh refused to move into the palace, saying it belonged to the people. Instead he lived first in a small house that had belonged to the palace electrician \u2014 known as House 54 \u2014 and from 1958 in a simple wooden stilt house built behind it, beside a fish pond. He lived and worked there until shortly before his death in 1969.<\/p>\n
The Stilt House (Nha San Bac Ho<\/em>) was designed in the style of the houses of the Viet Bac mountains, where Ho Chi Minh had led the resistance. It is very simple: a study and a bedroom upstairs, open space underneath where he held meetings, and a few personal belongings kept exactly as they were. Visitors walk around it rather than through it, looking in through the open shutters.<\/p>\n The relic site covers about 14 hectares of gardens, mango-tree alleys and flower beds. Highlights include the carp pond that Ho Chi Minh used to feed by clapping his hands, House 67 where he spent his last months, and the garage with the cars he used. The whole visit follows a one-way path and takes about an hour.<\/p>\n Our 2-hour and half-day city tours by jeep, electric scooter and with our female riders ride past the Presidential Palace and the Ba Dinh complex, with the guide telling the story. To walk inside the grounds, plan a separate morning visit combined with the mausoleum.<\/p>\n Yes, if you are interested in Ho Chi Minh’s life or in French colonial architecture. The grand mustard-yellow palace itself is closed to visitors, but the relic site around it \u2013 his simple stilt house, House 54, House 67, the carp pond he fed by clapping, and 14 hectares of gardens \u2013 is open and follows a one-way path of about an hour. It sits right behind the Mausoleum, so the natural plan is to see both in one morning; the relic site costs about 40,000 VND.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u4e00\u5ea7\u5750\u843d\u4e8e\u70ed\u5e26\u82b1\u56ed\u4e2d\u7684\u6cd5\u5c5e\u65f6\u671f\u82a5\u672b\u9ec4\u5b8f\u4f1f\u5bab\u6bbf\uff0c\u4ee5\u53ca\u80e1\u5fd7\u660e\u4e3b\u5e2d\u5f53\u5e74\u9009\u62e9\u7b80\u6734\u8d77\u5c45\u4e0e\u529e\u516c\u7684\u4f20\u7edf\u6728\u6784\u9ad8\u811a\u5c4b\u6545\u5c45\u3002<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":55,"menu_order":14,"template":"","eta_destination":[9],"class_list":["post-178","eta_place","type-eta_place","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/eta_place"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/178\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"eta_destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_destination?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The gardens and the fish pond<\/h3>\n
Is the Presidential Palace worth visiting?<\/h2>\n