Hotel Metropole Ha Noi

28th August, 2012.

Hotel Metropole Hanoi (now Sofitel Metropole) is a 5 star historic luxury hotel built in 1901 in the French colonial style.  The hotel has a rich history and a century long tradition of welcoming ambassadors, writers, heads of state and entertainers including Charlie Chaplin, Jane Fonda, George H.W.Bush, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, Joan Baez, Angelina Jolie (and our next door neighbour Jacqui).

 

Over the years, the hotel has won awards such as “Best Hotel in Vietnam” and has featured in various “World’s best hotels” lists.

So we had to check it out.

 

Outside, as well as an obligatory cyclo, were a couple of vintage Citroens (1953 and 1956) which hotel guests could hire for sightseeing in “old charming Hanoi”.  I think Pat is deciding that we will walk.

 

The doormen weren’t exactly rushing out to welcome us.  I think we must have looked too scruffy.

 

We went in and had a look around.  There was lots of mahogany panelling, wrought iron lacework and palm trees, reminiscent of Raffles in Singapore (she said namedroppingly).  There were pictures of their famous guests on the walls, but I noticed that nobody rushed up to photograph us.  Rattan ceiling fans moved lazily in the shaded rooms (supplemented surreptitiously by efficient air conditioners).

 

Our Lonely Planet Guide suggested that we should “pop in for a drink” to the Bamboo Room.  However, the Bamboo Room turned out to be outdoors by the pool, beyond the reach of the hidden air conditioners, and far too hot.  We selected instead a glassed-in annexe of an indoor bar, within reach of both fans and air conditioners.

 

After scanning the drinks menu, we decided to settle for coffee.

I made it last as long as possible.

During the American war, as the US Air Force began bombing Ha Noi, the Vietminh army constructed a bunker under the hotel for the safety of the hotel’s guests, among them, ironically, various Americans.  The bunker’s  walls were of reinforced concrete about 30 centimetres thick.  Jane Fonda and Joan Baez both spent time in this bunker.

With the reopening of the hotel in the 1990s, a ‘Bamboo Bar’ at the shallow end of the pool was built on top of the bunker, and everyone forgot about its existence. In 2011, construction workers laying the foundation of a new Bamboo Bar stumbled upon a solid layer of concrete.  After excavating more than two metres of earth and reinforced concrete and then jack-hammering through the 30 centimetre ceiling, the hotel opened the hatch on a warren of flooded corridors, chambers and stairways.  The old bunker had been rediscovered!

On 21st May 2012, the hotel bunker was reopened as a memorial to the hotel's wartime employees.  Regular tours usher hotel guests through the space, which has largely been left as it was found during its chance rediscovery in 2011.  The bomb shelter is open to hotel guests and staff, as well as local Hanoians.

 

As we left, we were spotted by a cruising cyclo driver.  But we still wanted to walk.

Where Are You Now, My Son? is an album by Joan Baez, released in early 1973. One side of the album featured recordings Baez made during a US bombing raid on Ha Noi over Christmas 1972, from the bunker under the Hotel Metropole:

‘We gathered in the lobby celebrating Christmas Eve,
The French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and Vietnamese,
The tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalms,
But the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombs.
So back into the shelter where two lovely women rose,
And with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which froze,
The rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joy,
Outshining every bomb that fell that night upon Hanoi.’

O people of the shelter, what a gift you’ve given me,
To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony.
And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask,
Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things we’ve brought to pass.