In the footsteps of Graham Greene at the Continental Saigon

by Adrian Mourby

When I opened the French windows on to the balcony of my room at the Hotel Continental Saigon they squeaked and juddered.

Windows don’t do that at the Park Hyatt or the Sheraton just across the road, but then the Continental is different. It was here first.

It opened in 1886 opposite the opera house in what was known then as Place Garnier. The French author André Malraux stayed here in the 1920s when he was founding his anti-colonial newspaper Indochine.

The legendary U.S. reporter Walter Cronkite stayed too when reporting on what is known in Vietnam as "The American War."  

But my reason for coming to the Continental was to pay tribute to one of the best-known English "man of letters" of the 20th century, Graham Greene, who 60 years ago holed up in room 214 to start work on a novel about the genesis of that disastrous conflict.