Walking through the centre of Ho Chi Min City last night one would think the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, as it used to be called, was being celebrated as an American rather than a Vietnamese occasion.
The US television network NBC had taken over a square near the Opera House to broadcast a live commentary by Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who had served time in the "Hanoi Hilton" jail during the war.
The garden roof of the adjacent Rex Hotel was occupied by dozens of veteran correspondents from the Vietnam War period staging a noisy reunion. It was here that US military briefers held the "Five O'Clock Follies", the often fictional account of progress in the Vietnam War.
However, government celebrations will take pride of place tomorrow. Throughout the city yesterday red banners with the gold star of communist Vietnam were hoisted alongside billboards with paintings of tanks scoring a victory over the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, which ceased to exist on April 30th, 1975. That was when the last US helicopter lifted off the US embassy roof amid scenes of chaos.
The Vietnam government will host the official celebrations in the grounds of the former presidential palace. To create an atmosphere of good will, it has announced an amnesty for 12,264 prisoners, 29 of them foreigners.
Official media said they would include murderers and fraudsters, making all the more mysterious the decision to execute a Canadian national on Monday for drug-smuggling, after four years in jail.
The foreigners are from Australia, Cambodia, Laos, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States, all convicted of criminal offences. Canada said it was reviewing its ties with Hanoi and scrapping an offer to provide World Trade Organisation training for Vietnamese officials after the execution on Monday of Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Canadian of Vietnamese origin.
Meanwhile, the behaviour of Senator McCain, an advocate of normalising relation between the US and Vietnam, has also been something of a mystery, and raised questions about why he came here in the first place (he returned to the US last night). He told CNN yesterday he believed the wrong side won the Vietnam War, comments guaranteed to infuriate the Vietnam government.
"I think that the wrong guys won. I think that they lost millions of their best people who left by boat, thousands by execution and hundreds of thousands who went to re-education camps," said Mr McCain.
"The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship."
The Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Phan Thuy Thanh, earlier said Mr McCain's remarks were "a sheer distortion of the facts that have deeply hurt the feelings of the Vietnamese people". The Arizona senator had said some of his friends in the "Hanoi Hilton" were killed and ill-treated and he could not forgive the Vietnamese for that.
"It is the United States, initiator of the war of aggression in Vietnam which has committed horrendous crimes against the Vietnamese people," said the spokesman.
"It runs counter to the norms of morality that people who brought bombs and shells to sow death among our people and wreak havoc with the country now pass themselves off as having the right to criticise their victims-cum-saviours."