For one tumultuous decade between 1965 and 1975, Vietnam was a mainstay on the front pages of newspapers around the world as the Vietnamese fought for reunification promised by the Geneva Conference in 1954. Throughout that time, the Caravelle was incubator to much of the news that formed the world’s opinion about Vietnam and the war that raged here.
This is where many of the journalists stayed, wrote their news, and witnessed the eruptions of war. Many journalists’ accounts and memoirs mention the inimitable rooftop bar of the Caravelle, now known as the Saigon Saigon but then called Jerome and Juliette’s.
“In the early evenings we’d do exactly what correspondents did in those terrible stories that would circulate in 1964 and 1965," Michael Herr wrote in his memoir of the war, Dispatches. “We’d stand on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel having drinks and watch the air strikes across the river, so close that a good telephoto lens would pick up the markings on the planes. There were dozens of us up there, like aristocrats viewing Borodino from the heights.”
The story of the hotel begins in the 1950s, during the relative lull between the French War that concluded with the Geneva Conference and the American War that began in earnest when the first detachment of U.S. Marines waded ashore at Red Beach in Da Nang in March 1965.
In 1957, while Joseph L. Mankiewicz was filming the original cinematic spectacle of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American in Lam Son Square, a group of investors that included Air France, the Australian Embassy and the Archbishopric of Saigon was preparing to build a state-of-the-art hotel in the heart of the city. When the Caravelle opened for business on Christmas Eve in 1959, its amenities were the envy of Vietnam’s hospitality scene. Its Italian marble dazzled Saigon, and its bullet-proof glass provided an extra dose of security in a region on the verge of yet another war.
The air conditioning system was a first for any hotel in Vietnam. Even into the middle 1960s, the novelty of air conditioning was still a selling point in a region where swelter had always been part of the story.
"I keep it too cold," the manager of the Caravelle told Time magazine in 1964. "I like people to notice that this hotel is air conditioned."
From the very beginning, the hotel has been a setting for pivotal events in Vietnam's modern history. Shortly after opening, its signature bar became the rendezvous for a group of Saigon intellectuals who came to be known as the Caravellists. Disaffected by the morally rigorous, rigidly Catholic, anti-unification policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem, the Caravellists drafted a document in the hotel calling on Diem to ease up on his opponents and grant basic human rights. Diem countered by jailing some members and shutting down newspapers that criticized him.
By 1962, the roll-call of journalists began in earnest. AP correspondent Peter Arnett spent his first night in Vietnam at the Caravelle. He later became a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and CNN correspondent.
In the early days of the war, The New York Times and Life magazine operated out of the hotel, as did two major U.S. networks — ABC and CBS. Luminaries from Nobel prize-winning author John Steinbeck to Oscar-winning film director John Ford also they stayed at the Caravelle.
Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS news reporter, stayed at the Caravelle during his 1968 tour of the country. It was at the hotel's tables and bar that Cronkite considered America’s problem in Vietnam. Later, he made his now-famous report to the American people that the United States was locked in hopeless stalemate in Vietnam. Cronkite’s assessment of the war factored prominently into Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election in 1968. The rest, as they say, is history.
Occasionally, I’ll spot someone walking through the old wing of the hotel, looking at views from windows and the rooftop bar, much of which is unchanged from the war. Generally, I leave them to their reveries. I know that some were here during the war, and this nostalgic trip — this ‘Namstalgic’ trip — is yet another glimpse at a place, and in the mind’s eye, at a time when the affairs of the world burned hotter here than anywhere else on the planet.
Thomas Wolfe told us "you can’t go home again." But that sentiment belies the comment of a recent guest who sought me out to tell me that he stayed here for months on end in 1970 and, despite all the changes, it still feels like home.
I hope you enjoy reading Saigon Gold and will mention the historic Caravelle Hotel to your friends and associates when they plan a trip to Vietnam.
John Gardner,
General Manager
Caravelle Hotel 19 Lam Son Square, District 1 Ho Chi Minh City