Candace Rose Rardon: Friends and Forgiveness at Saigon’s Reunification Palace

08 Jul Candace Rose Rardon: Friends and Forgiveness at Saigon’s Reunification Palace

Candace Rose Rardon is an American writer, photographer and artist who sketches as she travels. These sketches, combined with the stories behind them, poignantly portray those moments of encounter and illumination that become the stepping stones of adventure, inner and outer. We are extremely pleased to present her on-the-road sketches-and-stories here.

SAIGON, VIETNAM — On my last morning in Saigon, there is one place I have left to sketch: the Reunification Palace.

Built in 1966, it played a central role in the Vietnam War, serving as the headquarters of the president of South Vietnam, and later, as the setting for the Fall of Saigon, after a North Vietnamese tank barreled through its gates. I’d passed it the previous night with two new friends, college students named Hà and Nhan.

“You know this place? It is Independence Palace,” Nhan said, referring to the building by its former name. “You know war? Between Vietnam and America?”

I told her I did, and on the tip of my tongue, perched as lightly as a diver on the edge of a platform, were two words: I’m sorry.

I had felt this way before, in the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office in Delhi. While I stood in line to receive a number to wait in yet another line, I spoke with the girl next to me, her dark hair covered by a red headcloth.

“Where are you from?” she asked, after telling me her name was Zhila. I had seen her passport and answered with hesitance. Zhila was from Iran.

“Ah, American,” she said. “Iran and USA are, you know…”

“I know,” I said, once again feeling the need to apologize, or explain myself. “But it is nice to meet you.” I didn’t want something as out of our control as our nationalities to get in the way.

And so as I spend my last hours in Saigon sketching the palace, I break down reunification, strip away the prefix and the suffix, and get to the heart of the word: unify, “to make or become united.” Because isn’t that what travel – and more specifically, connection – is about?

Accepting the differences we can’t change and acknowledging that what unites us everywhere is the same thing that united me with Hà and Nhan and Zhila:

A simple little thing called friendship.

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Don George

Don George is the Adventure Collection’s Web Editor in Chief. A highly respected and pioneering travel journalist for more than three decades, Don is the author of "The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George," and of "Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing." Don is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler and Special Features Editor for BBC Travel. He has also been Global Travel Editor for Lonely Planet Publications, Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, and founder and editor of Salon.com’s travel site, Wanderlust. In addition to authoring two books, Don has edited ten literary travel anthologies, including “The Kindness of Strangers,” “An Innocent Abroad," and "Better Than Fiction." He has won numerous awards for his writing and editing, and he speaks, teaches, and consults at campuses, conferences, and corporations around the world.

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