Ho Chi Minh's Residence

Ho Chi Minh's Residence, often referred to as the Ho Chi Minh's Stilt House or Ho Chi Minh's House on Stilts, is behind the Presidential Palace, a gorgeous complex with the main building of a palace built in 1901 for the resident French governor. Since 1954, the Vietnamese government took over this Palace to house the President. But the "man of the people" personality Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the Palace, instead, he moved into a normal electrician’s house nearby in 1958 until his death in 1969.

So actually Ho Chi Minh's Residence is not a grandiose palace but a modest stilt house. Walking around, visitors can feel President Ho’s simple and pure lifestyle in a wooden tiled house on stilt (of the ethnic minority group’s style), surrounded by a garden full of trees and a peaceful fishpond. The garden is a well-cultivated one, set with fruit trees, willows, hibiscus, flame trees, and frangipani. It is said that Ho Chi Minh used to summon fish to feed with a single crisp clap, and carps in the pond are said to respond much the same way today. Located in such a nature-oriented environment, the house has simply two floors. The ground floor was the meeting place, consisting of 12 chairs around a large table. Upstairs, there are two small rooms (about a hundred square feet each) containing a bare minimum of personal effects for President Ho’s living and working.