We started our day with a visit to Maison Centrale in Hanoi. It is also known as Hoa Lo Prison and the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ housed Vietnamese revolutionaries and American POW during the Vietnam War.
Situated in the centre of Hanoi close to the French Quarter, Maison Centrale was French built for housing Vietnamese political campaigners for independence and was completed in 1913.
The first room displays old pottery and kilns typical of the area before the French razed the town to make way for the Hoa Lo Prison.
The second room in the building displays a diorama of Hoa Lo Prison back in its heyday, along with a large iron gate that looms over the room.
The next section is a long room with life-size models of Vietnamese prisoners shackled in two rows, with the latrine on one end of the room. Prisoners were confined in horrifying conditions, fed rotting food twice daily, and were allowed only fifteen minutes' respite from their chains every day.
To prevent them from moving around freely in the open chamber, prisoners slept with their ankles shackled to the barre.
Off to the side we saw a cachot, or dungeon, where dangerous or suicidal prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. In each narrow cell, a prisoner was shackled to the concrete floor, and the area was kept under tight guard.
We were able to enter and explore some of these cells along a narrow corridor.
Next we went outdoor where we saw a Sentry Box, which was built at four corners of the prison.
Hoa Lo prison was never "escape proof" despite its fearsome reputation and several successful jailbreaks were recorded throughout the prison's long history. From the night of 11th to 16th of March 1945, over 100 Hoa Lo political prisoners escaped through the below underground sewage. They reached different locations and participated in general insurrection, then became the Party and Government leaders.
A guillotine stands against one wall to underscore the gruesome executions that took place here.
The prison was later used for American POWs, usually pilots caught when their planes went down. From the photos displayed in the gallery, it seemed like these POWs in the prison were quite well-treated then.
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