In October 1998, Phan Thiet held a festival to celebrate its 100th anniversary as a town (on October 20, 1898, King Thanh Thai issued an edict announcing that Phan Thiet would become a town (urban centre) at the same time as Thanh Hoa, Vinh, Hue, Hoi An, Quy Nhon and the provincial capital of Binh Thuan).
At that time, there was a contest called “Collecting - Exhibiting old Phan Thiet photos”. Through the campaign, many families who had the means took and kept old Phan Thiet photos before 1945 and sent them to the exhibition. After that, many photo lovers took and filmed them, then widely distributed them online, printed them in books and newspapers, and without knowing when, those photos became documentary photos.
The panoramic photo shows us that Ong Hoang Tower is located not far from the Cham tower cluster in Pho Hai, according to recorded documents and folk tales. That is, on a day at the end of 1910, a young French aristocrat named Hoang Quan Cong De Montpensier, a friend of Mr. Le Phat An (the uncle of Queen Nam Phuong), came to Vietnam to play, went to Binh Thuan to hunt, came to Phu Hai and saw the beautiful scenery with 5 hills of Buu Son, Bach Ho, Thanh Long, Long Son and Ngoc Son (Co mountain) overlooking the ocean with murmuring waves, cool offshore wind, so he decided to buy the entire Bach Ho hill, 5.74 hectares wide, 105 meters high above sea level to build a villa as a place for recreation and relaxation... Along with the close-up photo, just one corner of the entrance also helps us visualize the scale of the villa, the foundation is cast in green stone, the floor is paved with 2 meters high tiles, under the steps is a rainwater tank. The villa has a total usable area of 536 m2 including 13 rooms. In addition, the ancillary works are also very large, with a 113 m2 power plant on the right, an 80 m2 horse stable on the left, and behind is a water tank, bathroom, kitchen, and houses for servants...
According to documents and folk tales, after the villa was built, the Prince brought his beautiful young lover from France to establish “The Eagle’s Nest”, nicknamed “Nid d'Aigle” in French. However, not long after, the nobleman had to return to France, and she had another lover there. When the Prince found out, he hired a sharpshooter from France to end her life… And from then on, the Prince never returned to Vietnam again…
In front of a magnificent castle, which was also the site of a tragic love affair, next to an ancient Cham tower tinged with gloom, around 1933, poetess Mong Cam in Phan Thiet wrote the poem "Vinh Lau Ong Hoang": The mountains and rivers of this land/Who built the castle, who built the tower/Dew and sun, the heart of stone/Wind and rain, the fate of trees/The world is full of sorrow and waves/Life's success and failure are only a few clouds/Where can I find the path to the land of happiness/Seeing the heartbreaking scene, the drunken traveler is sober. The above poem, along with other poems, was sent by poetess Mong Cam to be published in Cong Luan newspaper, Saigon - where poet Han Mac Tu was in charge of the literary page. Since then, poetess Mong Cam was noticed by poet Han Mac Tu, who sent her a letter to get acquainted. Then one day in 1936, the poet was in Phan Thiet with the poetess, walking around and admiring the moon on the Ong Hoang Tower to start a love affair, but soon separated in tragedy. Han Mac Tu was startled with the following lines of poetry: “…Then, foolishly, thanks to the seven stars showing the way/I wandered to the moon tower/The Ong Hoang Tower, people around the world rumored/The place where I cried, I loved passionately/Oh my God! It is Phan Thiet, Phan Thiet/But the sadness remains of a fallen star/I arrived, she had been gone for a long time/That means she died thousands of centuries ago… And poetess Mong Cam with the following lines of narrative poetry: “…Where are you here at the Ong Hoang Tower?/The old soul is gone, the scene sows sorrow/Clouds and mist cover the flat land/The old tower resents the vicissitudes of life…”.
It is known that after the love affair, the villa Lau Ong Hoang was managed by the French authorities for vacations of French officials and mandarins of the Southern Dynasty. In the book "Traditional History of Phu Hai Ward - Volume I (1945 - 1975)" published by the Phu Hai Ward Party Committee in November 2017, page 56 has a passage about the August Revolution in Phu Hai: "... Comrade Tieu Nghi, on behalf of the Viet Minh of Ham Thuan Prefecture, together with Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hiep (Muoi Hap) went to Phu Hai to organize the provisional revolutionary committees of the villages, receiving the handover of Lau Ong Hoang...". This allows us to infer that the old government managed Lau Ong Hoang before handing it over to the revolutionary government. Also according to the above History book, at that time the villages in the Phu Hai area still kept their old names, on the left bank there were 6 villages (Tu Lam, Ngoc Lam, An Hai, Thien Chanh, Xuan Hoa, Son Thuy) belonging to Thang An commune, on the right bank there was Tan Phu village belonging to Lai An commune, both belonging to Ham Thuan prefecture. Mr. Ho Van Lai (Tong Lai) was in charge of Viet Minh Lai An commune and Mr. Cao Xuan Le was in charge of Viet Minh Thang An commune, both of them used Lau Ong Hoang as their headquarters, regularly contacting the villages. Thus, some articles about Lau Ong Hoang claiming that "during the August Revolution, with hatred for the French, the people of Phu Hai destroyed Lau Ong Hoang because it was a Western house" are incorrect.
According to historical documents, on March 16, 1946, the French organized a large-scale operation from Phan Thiet to occupy Phu Hai, initially stationed in the Xuan Hoa village school area (the area of the current People's Committee headquarters and primary school). Later, they moved to renovate Lau Ong Hoang into a fort and stationed there. On June 14, 1947, Hoang Hoa Tham Company - E 82 Binh Thuan disguised itself to attack and destroy Lau Ong Hoang fort, winning a great victory. After that, the French army re-encamped but was on the defensive, and in May 1948, they withdrew and abandoned the fort. In October 1948, Ham Thuan district learned that the French army intended to reoccupy Phu Hai and would gather people to fence off the village and establish a concentration area, so they ordered Phu Hai to destroy solid, spacious public works that the enemy might occupy as a place to station troops and live long-term. The district reinforced the Sa Ra and Tuy Hoa militia to support, along with the Phu Hai militia commanded by the commune team leader Le Dinh Xuan, to destroy over 60 public facilities in 3 days, including key projects: Market, Ong Hoang Palace, Ngoc Lam restaurant, village house, pagoda, Tien Hien palace, shrines of gods... On May 2, 1949, the French army sent a force of about 1 battalion to march to Co Mountain, then set up a fort on the old foundation of Ong Hoang Palace, but this time they built it solidly with reinforced concrete bunkers, especially a towering watchtower on high that could clearly observe in all four directions up to 10 kilometers, and from far below it looked like a Western-style building, so later generations who did not know the story thought it was Ong Hoang Palace.
There are also people who are mistaken, insisting that the location only has a French military post (later continued to be the military base of Binh Thuan Sub-region), there is no Ong Hoang Palace but Ong Hoang Palace is located about 800 - 1,000 meters to the east near Ngoc Lam village, they misunderstood Ong Hoang Palace is Ngoc Lam restaurant, also owned by French people but owned by a French capitalist with a Western name that people often call "Tay Guerry", he is also the owner of the "Grand Hotel" located at a corner of Quan Phan Thiet bridge, the location today is the working headquarters of the Provincial Party Committee. The elderly in Phu Hai still remember the story, on the night of March 8, 1945, Japan overthrew France, Japan arrested the French authorities and French expatriates in Phan Thiet and detained them at the "Grand Hotel". The Japanese gendarmerie hired a horse carriage from Mr. Tu Xuong with an order to gather a Frenchman who was vacationing at Mui Da. On the way back to the detention center, this Frenchman was sneaky, afraid that the hateful people would beat him in revenge, but Mr. Tu Xuong did not do that.
To end this article, I would like to add more information, there is a photo taken of a corner of the Lau Ong Hoang military base after the liberation of the homeland in 1975, the person standing on that reinforced concrete bunker is Mr. Vo Tho Doan, originally from Phu Hai (Mr. Doan is the younger brother of Lieutenant Colonel Vo Tho Son, Deputy Head of the Military Group of Military Region 6 in the 4-party Joint Military Committee in Binh Thuan in February 1973, also participating in the group was Captain Le Manh Tien from Mui Ne as an assistant officer, both of them are familiar with the Lau Ong Hoang villa in the past which later became the Lau Ong Hoang base). In 1946, Mr. Doan worked as a bricklayer. When the French army passed through Phu Hai and used Lau Ong Hoang as a military post, they hired him to repair the accommodation, warehouse, water reservoir... so he remembered to draw a layout map of the post to provide for Hoang Hoa Tham Company - E 82 Binh Thuan in the disguised raid to destroy Lau Ong Hoang post on June 14, 1947. Also during the 100th anniversary of Phan Thiet becoming a town, the veterans of E 82 built a "Victory of Lau Ong Hoang" Monument right at the old post location.
Today, the Cham tower cluster has been ranked as a National Historical and Cultural Relic, preserved and promoted for its cultural value, becoming a key destination for Binh Thuan tourism. It is a pity that the Ong Hoang Palace is no longer there, but there is also joy that on this mountainous, sand dune-covered land overlooking the ocean... from the "rocky road uphill" Phu Hai to Ong Dia Rock, Rang, Mui Ne, Hon Rom, Bau Trang... dozens of famous resorts and tourist villas have sprung up on the Vietnam tourism map...
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