Turtle Lake

This guide to Turtle Lake in Ho Chi Minh City opens in 1967, when a newly installed president called in a feng shui master who read the whole stretch of Saigon as a restless dragon with its thrashing tail right at this spot. It follows the fix the master prescribed and the octagonal plaza, tiered lotus-shaped tower and bronze turtle that architect Nguyen Ky built here to hold the city's fortune in place by 1969. A marble slab once stood beside the fountains naming the nations that had backed the government.