April 30th Park

This guide to April 30th Park in Ho Chi Minh City follows a name that locals used for half a century before the city ever recognized it, and traces what happened at the palace gates across the boulevard on April 30, 1975, and what some accounts say this same ground witnessed on September 2, 1945. It also walks the park's four plots, cut apart by Le Duan and Pasteur streets, and the two side streets named for men credited with shaping written Vietnamese. Listen for the coffee vendors near the cathedral corner still practicing ca phe bet, sipping from plastic cups on newspapers spread over the pavement.