Visiting Uncle Ho

Hi Everyone, I'll write a lot more about Vietnam when we get home (right now it's the end of day 2) but for now I wanted to quickly write about the surreal experience of seeing Ho Chi Minh before I forget the details. Also this is our last night in a place with a computer and internet in the room so I wanted to take advantage of it. Tomorrow we're doing a trip to Halong Bay, which includes a night on the boat and then we have three more nights in Hanoi and we're staying in a different hotel.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is a bit far from where we're staying, so we took a Cyclo, which is a little cart that's pushed in front of a bike. It's a good way to get right into the crazy traffic while still feeling relatively safe (and we took a bunch of pictures during the ride that I'll put up when we get home). When we got there we saw a huge line of people waiting to get in but as we were walking toward the end of the line a man told us he could get us past the line to a special shortcut only for foreigners if we'd slip him five dollars (turned out to be five each). I'm not sure what the deal with that is, though we ended up in a line with all the other foreigners and it was much, much shorter, so he wasn't lying. I suppose he makes a deal with the guards, and I'm guessing the reason he said it was 'only for English, Australians, and Americans' is because the Vietnamese wouldn't be willing to pay that.

Anyway, after lots of waiting and passing through a metal detector and then more waiting to check cameras we made it into the mausoleum building. There were lots of guards inside and they shush you and push you into two lines and herd you toward the room with Uncle Ho himself. The room is a big square with the casket in the center and four guards standing around it. You walk on a narrow little path around three sides of the casket and then back out and it all happens very quickly, though you don't really need any more time because all you're doing is looking at a body. The guards grab your elbows and keep you moving along and they also pushed the children to a center track for walking around so that they can see, which is nice. The whole thing felt a little strange and it felt like a lot of hubbub for such a short visit but, hey, how often do you get to see the body of a national hero? Apparently you're supposed to watch the faces of the Vietnamese people in there because they're so reverant but I forgot to do that because I was too busy looking at Ho Chi Minh.

Ok, that's it for now. We've been keeping very busy walking around and seeing things and eating ice cream. This place is pretty fascinating and very different from anywhere I've been before (and an interesting change from Japan). Thanks for reading!

Cate