Saigon Morin Hotel

At the foot of Trường Tiền Bridge, where Lê Lợi Street runs along the bank of the Perfume River, stands an old French building. It rests quietly between the noise of traffic and the sound of the river wind. This is the Saigon Morin Hotel, one of the notable French landmarks that remain in Hue.

The hotel opened in 1901, under French rule, when Hue was still the capital of the Nguyễn dynasty. That was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. Through the early decades of the 20th century, the Saigon Morin was regarded as the most luxurious place in Indochina. Its guests were not ordinary people. They were officials and merchants, and also people famous around the world who stopped in the old capital.

In 1936, Charlie Chaplin, the clown king of the world's silent films, chose the Saigon Morin as the place to spend his honeymoon. Think of the man the whole world knew by his mustache and his cane. Somewhere beneath the old trees in the grounds, he sat and looked out at the Perfume River in the early morning. It is a quiet scene, very far from the stage lights of Europe and America.

Inside, the wooden staircase is still there, with the look of another age. Its steps are more than a hundred years old, and they have borne the feet of generation after generation of guests. Outside, the old trees spread their shade across the courtyard, in no hurry and unchanged by the tourist season. They are the quietest part of the building's memory.

The Saigon Morin is not only a place to stay. It is a layer of Hue. French architecture, the history of the dynasty and the private stories of each guest have settled there one on top of another across many decades. To stand in front of the hotel is to look at a span of time longer than a human life.

And somewhere in the shade of those trees, people can still picture the most famous man of the 20th century. He sits quite ordinarily, listening to the Perfume River flow through a Hue summer.