FROM Hollywood starlets to scruffy trade union delegations, an unassuming reinforced concrete bunker under a central Hanoi hotel sheltered communist Vietnam’s most important wartime guests.
Sealed off and forgotten after hostilities ended in 1975, the dank subterranean passages were unearthed during recent renovations at the hotel, now favored by foreign tourists and wealthy Vietnamese.
“I felt a little bit like Indiana Jones discovering the Temple of Doom or something,” said Kai Speth, general manager of the Metropole Hotel, describing when he first entered the seven-room bunker, which was knee-deep in water.
There were always rumors that the bunker — no more than 20 square meters (215 square feet) in size — was under the swimming pool bar, he said.
“So I told the team when we were rebuilding the foundations of the bar: ‘Let’s dig a little deeper’.”
The bunker was built in 1968 when the hotel, then known as the Thong Nhat, was a drab, government-run establishment used by the communist authorities to house visiting delegations, including a string of prominent American anti-war activists.
Actress Jane Fonda and folk singer Joan Baez both used the shelter, with Baez recording a song in it during the Christmas bombings in December 1972, when the US dropped some 20,000 tones of ordnance in 11 days.
More than 1,600 civilians died in the attack, and Baez’s 21-minute recording “Where Are You Now, My Son?,” made in the concrete passages, captures some of the sounds of wartime Hanoi.
“You can hear the bombs falling. You can hear the anti-air(craft) machine guns going off that were mounted on the Opera House” near the hotel, Speth said.
Fonda arrived after the Christmas Bombings, her then interpreter Tran Minh Quoc told AFP, but she was caught in several raids during her controversial tour of the country, which earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane” back in the States.
“We could hear the bombing from afar and we together went down to the bunker.... The American air force never hit the hotel. (Fonda) was very calm.... She didn’t show any fear,” he said.
The bunker at the Metropole, which will be preserved in its original state and is open for tours for guests, is one of thousands of similar bomb shelters dug across Hanoi during the decades-long conflict.
Most have since been filled in, but one other famous site remains — behind the walls of Thang Long Citadel lies a bunker where former key leaders General Vo Nguyen Giap and president Ho Chi Minh once sheltered from bomb attacks.
While most of Vietnam’s war tourism industry is concentrated in the south — visitors to Ho Chi Minh City can visit the famous war museum and Cu Chi tunnels — signs of Hanoi’s wartime legacy abound if you know where to look.
A small plaque next to Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake marks the spot where US Senator John McCain was shot down as a navy pilot and dragged ashore to become a prisoner of war — one of 10 American planes to be downed by anti-aircraft gunners on just one day in 1967.
Tourists can also visit the so-called “Hanoi Hilton,” where American POWs like McCain were held. While much of the Hoa Lo Prison was demolished, sections of it, including the gatehouse, remain open as a museum.
Not all Hanoi’s war relics are memorials. On the shore of the city’s West Lake, one family has transformed a former French armaments store into a popular cafe.
“This cafe has a special style because of historic values. When people come here, they are more curious about history,” owner Vu Thi Huong told AFP.
In other parts of the city, the wartime history has been absorbed into the scenery.
Other business owners are hoping to cash in on wartime nostalgia — a new themed restaurant in Hanoi, called the “State-run Food Shop number 37,” takes customers back to the days of food rationing.
For around $ 25, you can get an authentic 1970s-style meal for six, served to you by staff wearing uniforms from the actual state-run shops of the period, in a restaurant packed with war-era memorabilia.
“A good place for the old to remember the difficult era and (for) the youth to understand a historic period — though the dishes are not all delicious,” a September review in the official Vietnam News Agency said.
For Bob Devereaux, an Australian diplomat stationed in Hanoi in 1975, wartime relics are important to help the younger generation — some 60 percent of Vietnam’s population is under 35 — come to terms with the past.
Devereaux was put up at the Thong Nhat hotel, where the Australian embassy was located at the time, and he used the underground bunker as storage — even carving his name into wet cement, where it remains to this day.
“I’m a great lover of nostalgia so I find it very interesting. It reminds me of what times were like around about 1975. The war was very bitter and savage,” he said.
In Vietnam, “anyone younger than 40 or so has no memory of war,” he added. “I think it’s a good thing for them to come and see what life was about.”
Forgotten bunker offers glimpse of wartime Hanoi
Forgotten bunker offers glimpse of wartime Hanoi
As an uncertain 2026 begins, virtual journeys back to 2016 become a trend
- Over the past few weeks, millions have been sharing throwback photos to that time on social media, kicking off one of the first viral trends of the year
LONDON: The year is 2016. Somehow it feels carefree, driven by Internet culture. Everyone is wearing over-the-top makeup.
At least, that’s how Maren Nævdal, 27, remembers it — and has seen it on her social feeds in recent days.
For Njeri Allen, also 27, the year was defined by the artists topping the charts that year, from Beyonce to Drake to Rihanna’s last music releases. She also remembers the Snapchat stories and an unforgettable summer with her loved ones. “Everything felt new, different, interesting and fun,” Allen says.
Many people, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, are thinking about 2016 these days. Over the past few weeks, millions have been sharing throwback photos to that time on social media, kicking off one of the first viral trends of the year — the year 2026, that is.
With it have come the memes about how various factors — the sepia hues over Instagram photos, the dog filters on Snapchat and the music — made even 2016’s worst day feel like the best of times.
Part of the look-back trend’s popularity has come from the realization that 2016 was already a decade ago – a time when Nævdal says she felt like people were doing “fun, unserious things” before having to grow up.
But experts point to 2016 as a year when the world was on the edge of the social, political and technological developments that make up our lives today. Those same advances — such as developments under US President Donald Trump and the rise of AI — have increased a yearning for even the recent past, and made it easier to get there.
2016 marked a year of transition
Nostalgia is often driven by a generation coming of age — and its members realizing they miss what childhood and adolescence felt like. That’s certainly true here. But some of those indulging in the online journeys through time say something more is at play as well.
It has to do with the state of the world — then and now.
By the end of 2016, people would be looking ahead to moments like Trump’s first presidential term and repercussions of the United Kingdom leaving the EU after the Brexit referendum. A few years after that, the COVID-19 pandemic would send most of the world into lockdown and upend life for nearly two years.
Janelle Wilson, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, says the world was “on the cusp of things, but not fully thrown into the dark days that were to come.”
“The nostalgia being expressed now, for 2016, is due in large part to what has transpired since then,” she says, also referencing the rise of populism and increased polarization. “For there to be nostalgia for 2016 in the present,” she added, “I still think those kinds of transitions are significant.”
For Nævdal, 2016 “was before a lot of the things we’re dealing with now.” She loved seeing “how embarrassing everyone was, not just me,” in the photos people have shared.
“It felt more authentic in some ways,” she says. Today, Nævdal says, “the world is going downhill.”
Nina van Volkinburg, a professor of strategic fashion marketing at University of the Arts, London, says 2016 marked the beginning of “a new world order” and of “fractured trust in institutions and the establishment.” She says it also represented a time of possibility — and, on social media, “the maximalism of it all.”
This was represented in the bohemian fashion popularized in Coachella that year, the “cut crease” makeup Nævdal loved and the dance music Allen remembers.
“People were new to platforms and online trends, so were having fun with their identity,” van Volkinburg says. “There was authenticity around that.”
And 2016 was also the year of the “boss babe” and the popularity of millennial pink, van Volkinburg says, indications of young people coming into adulthood in a year that felt hopeful.
Allen remembers that as the summer she and her friends came of age as high school graduates. She says they all knew then that they would remember 2016 forever.
Ten years on, having moved again to Taiwan, she said “unprecedented things are happening” in the world. “Both of my homes are not safe,” she said of the US and Taiwan, “it’s easier to go back to a time that’s more comfortable and that you felt safe in.”
Feelings of nostalgia are speeding up
In the last few days, Nævdal decided to hide the social media apps on her phone. AI was a big part of that decision. “It freaks me out that you can’t tell what’s real anymore,” she said.
“When I’ve come off of social media, I feel that at least now I know the things I’m seeing are real,” she added, “which is quite terrifying.”
The revival of vinyl record collections, letter writing and a fresh focus on the aesthetics of yesterday point to nostalgia continuing to dominate trends and culture. Wilson says the feeling has increased as technology makes nostalgia more accessible.
“We can so readily access the past or, at least, versions of it,” she said. “We’re to the point where we can say, ‘Remember last week when we were doing XYZ? That was such a good time!’”
Both Nævdal and Allen described themselves as nostalgic people. Nævdal said she enjoys looking back to old photos – especially when they show up as “On This Day” updates on her phone, She sends them to friends and family when their photos come up.
Allen wished that she documented more of her 2016 and younger years overall, to reflect on how much she has evolved and experienced since.
“I didn’t know what life could be,” she said of that time. “I would love to be able to capture my thought process and my feelings, just to know how much I have grown.”
