Rex Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City

Rex Hotel, HCMC © L Peat O'Neil

The Rex, in downtown Saigon -- now Ho Chi Minh City -- was the hang out spot for newspaper correspondents, military "advisors" and Quiet Americans during the Vietnam War.  

Built in 1927 as a car dealership and showroom during the French colonial era, the Rex Hotel gained a few floors and became a hotel just in time for the arrival of U.S. Army soldiers and specialists in 1961.  During the war, journalists gathered to wash down their cynicism as unrealistic progress reports were delivered by military officials to the press.

After that war ended in 1975, the city tourism bureau took over the hotel.  By the mid-1980s, tourists and business entrepreneurs looking for trade opportunities were staying there. The rooftop restaurant-bar offers terrific views, drinks with paper parasols and an atmosphere not available elsewhere.