The Americans fled Vietnam 50 years ago. I visited the buildings they left behind.

On a rusty door in the upper part of a nine -storey residential building that no architect will not like, someone scratched an advertisement: “The fall of Saigon”.

Noguyen Van Hiep can still see this. On April 29, 1975, with the collapse of the southern government of Vietnam in the last hours of the war, a witness from the neighborhood when an American helicopter landed on the surface of the elevator spear of the building, which is a large area enough to hold skis.

A crowd of Vietnamese civilians is their way to the narrow ladder to the military helicopter, screaming and retail for the center. American with a white dress shirt absorbed fortunate on the plane.

“Everyone was fighting to get there,” said Mr. Hip, who helped his father to keep the building known as Peteman, where he lived and worked as the deputy director of the CIA. “It was very messy, only people in the building could go.”

What he saw became creative – Its understanding is offended – After a picture of the scene by Hubert Van Hu Click on the news wires with an incorrect editor’s comment, saying that he showed a solid pass in the American embassy.

I visited Pittman after 50 years with a simple question: What happened after the Americans left?

Thousands of us occupied the bureaucrats Sigon one day, as they did an invisible work of a catastrophic conflict of rest in regular buildings. Between office lunch, they publish anti -communist messages, calculated costs, and have done logistical services for food and ammunition.

When they left in a hurry, the revolutionary victors in Vietnam acquired the places of calm American papers and included loyalists and needy – the new tenants with new roles, with the aim of building a socialist country.

They entered the ground floor. As a modern city of nine million origins around them – it was renamed to Hoshi Minh, the revolutionary leader in Vietnam – the old structures have become experiences in national development.

Inside their walls, family life was blocked by two times. The more you get to know the buildings and their residents, the more you see the drama that was driven by time for a complex nation. It started with deprivation after the war. Then the pragmatism welcomed despair – but completely erased the lack of confidence in the deep regional divisions and a long war between the north and the south, America played an extensive role.

Communist spoils

A brief Betman for the Americans. The source of the name is still a mystery.

He was sitting in the city center directly, and it is one of the buildings that the Americans rented throughout Sigon, in this case for the CIA and the US International Development Agency, and its elevator was used to feel talking.

Now, its wide windows are seen across the street in the towers three times its size over a commercial center built by one of the largest developers in Vietnam.

Inside Bitman, less change. There are still two families who moved to the second floor in the 1970s, in the studios side

Treene, Thana Fong, who presented an informal tour, said he is proud of grew up in the purpose of war. His father was from Vietnam in the depths of southern Vietnam, but he fought for the north, then worked in a state -owned chemical company with offices on the upper floor.

Mr. Fong said: “He did a lot for the revolution,” said Mr. Fong. “This is how we got this.”

His mother, truong thi, sat at the entrance. When Van Ece’s picture was shook her, she shook her head.

She said, “It is the first time I have seen it at all.” “But I get to know the upper floor.”

On the fifth floor, two women – Ngwin Chang, Accountant, Water Man, Customs Director – worked in a quiet office on Saturday.

If the families on the basement represent the delicate years immediately after the war, when the Soviet style planning was injured in the economy, the works over it spoke to the nineties and beyond, when Vietnam embraced free trade. Their company takes the logistical services for leather manufacturers.

“We carry your dream,” you read a sign at the entrance to the glass office.

President Trump’s tariff, temporarily stopped at the present time, but reached 46 percent for Vietnam, threatening this optimism. Van ES examination, I was surprised by both women. Many people. Very few seats on the helicopter. It was difficult for them not to see Mr. Trump’s commercial policy as another example of giving up us.

They said that the whole region was in danger, but Vietnam was hoping for more respect, given the inheritance of the war in a country where American bombs remains Dioxin still threatens souls.

“I do not say it is betrayal, but it is not decent,” said Ms. Lynn, referring to the definitions. “It is not a decent way to treat a place where many problems have caused.”

Some doors stand below the street with a large gray building that includes the United States information service, which has been assigned to hearts and minds. Sometimes, it involves the promotion of democracy; At other times, this means the use of “Psyops”, the psychological processes that seek to address opinion.

The building was designed by Arthur Cruz, a French modernist, and it included library and radio studios, according to Tim Doling, the author of many books on the Sigon architectural heritage. Starting in 1956, the Americans rented three floors instead of building something of their own – a frequent pattern through Seijon.

Mr. Doling said it is something that made America’s influence more difficult to see Americans.

But there are still hints from the past forming the present.

Naguin Thi Beach Jiang, 66, who was selling soda outside the former USis building when she came, said she moved with her father – who worked with communist propaganda operations – after she left American propaganda. She had a job at a printing factory, where she met her husband, Trung Tan Dat, and they have been 37 years ago. They now live above an elegant Egyptian cocktail bar that plays a lot of Taylor Swift, and the high -end seafood restaurant sells Canadian sea locusts.

Wealth gap is not the only gap of the building. Mr. Dat and Mrs. Jiang also represent a different Vietnam.

At the end of the war, he was studying to become a navy doctor in South Vietnam, like his father. She was from a family of revolutionaries – “VC, VC”, joking Mr. Dat, noting and smiling to his wife, a former member of his old enemy, Viet Kong.

They were fun together when we met for the first time, but in his apartment alone one night, Mr. Dat admitted that he lost a lot with the defeat of the south.

His medical studies, dreams, and status, evaporated. All he can do is love and learn to stay in a system that he does not see the way his wife “VC” saw.

After playing a song on his guitar, he said: “It has been 50 years, but the wounds are still present.” “Lack of confidence still exists.”

stability? Or anxiety?

Some old American buildings seem to host doubts less common elsewhere.

Security guards in a tourist agency deported me from Villa, where the American leader lived in wartime, General William C. Westmoreland, in the 1960s.

Power or lower, in one of the largest residential buildings, where American officials were replaced by their Vietnamese counterparts, one of the residents refused to present a name for fear of the police; The last intense accreditation data examination.

The building on 218 Nguyen Dinh Chieu was shortly working as the headquarters of the American marine support activity, or NSA, which focused on logistics. After the war, which officially ended on April 30, 1975, the government news agency in Vietnam moved in dozens of families, focusing on thinking about a nearby society.

The doors remained unlocked. The wide paths were football fields and balcony gardens, where the next generation learned globalization and competition.

Huynh Kim Anh, 76, former head of the human resources of the City Government Studies Institute, pointed out a testimony that shows a grant for his daughter at Western Sydney University.

He said, “We have passed a very stable life here.”

However, the proximity of society made building a maze of whispers. In the early years, meals with better meat were hidden, to avoid gossip. Later, criticizing anything official caused the arguments of generations that were loudly, then silent.

Today, the NSAS building, Pittman and others pass again, and they are old to a state of exhaustion and re -innovation.

Segeon, as many still call it, feel bored. The trains on the new metro line are a few minutes. A national campaign against corruption has paralyzed the construction. In the NSAS building, the ash comrades die and the new tenants convert the rooms into the yoga studios, looking for wellness, not Lenin.

In Bitman, the need for sharp regeneration. A tape was closed on the surface that benefited from the theme of “Cigon’s Fall”, with war and peace, two years ago. Mr. Hip, who still lives near the place where he saw the land of the helicopter, is now wondering if the war is very far from attracting tourists for a longer period.

Mr. Fung, who presented a tour of Peteman, wants to move forward, but he does not know where to go. He works as a security guard for a large software, but he hopes the government will save him again-by paying the price of his family to move from his apartment in a good position in the middle of this dynamic city.

“Change is always happening,” he said. “I was proud of being here. But it’s time to go.”

NGO Tung contributed to the reports.