I was tour guide on arrival and we walked around the downtown area that I knew so well in '69-'71, stopping in the old Rex Hotel for lunch, which was a civilian accommodation before. We visited the Reunification Palace, which used to be the Presidential Palace that I lived next door to at one time. It included touring the bunker below to see the old maps and telecoms hardware that the past President of South Vietnam utilised, and the tanks outside that broke down the gates, famously covered on TV, on 30 April 1975 when the South fell to the North. The old US Embassy building, where the last helicopters took off from, is gone and replaced by a modern consulate building. The British Consulate is opposite and is the outside of the building is unchanged since it was the Embassy before. Both Embassies are now in Hanoi.
The Majestic Hotel is very swish and not the old run down hotel I lived in before, I'm glad to report! Despite the modernisation, it still commands a stunning view of the Saigon River from the rooftop.
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