They Call Him Uncle Ho

Today I went to see Uncle Ho.

Gardening skill level: epic

I got up at 6.15, had some breakfast - fruit, bread, tea, butter – and walked for about 45 minutes before I got to the queue to end all queues. People were lining up for a couple of hundred meters before the actual queue began. In this pre-queue, it was more of a pushing and shoving type of moving along where everybody was trying to get in front of everybody else. Oddly enough I'm taller than most Vietnamese and I was pretty much the only foreigner in the neighbourhood so I was spared most of the shoving due to an aura of unpredictability (my guess). After 15 minutes of this, the line broke up in two queues, one for people who had brought bags and one for people that didn't.

I wished I hadn't brought a bag.

After more pushing and shoving, they let me keep the bag, but took my drinking bottle, which I was welcome to pick up three hours later at that very spot, provided that I gave them back the ticket they just gave me. It was a paper ticket, with a number written on it in ink. Just what you need on a tropical day when you're wearing long trousers and a shirt with long sleeves, as one does not show up dressed unproperly when meeting Uncle Ho.

First feline spotted.

Then came the real queue, which was really, really long. Thankfully this queue had a roof over its head, as my pocket thermometer told me we'd just passed 40 degrees Celsius -DING!-. Along with a roof, this queue had fans, tv-broadcasting, discipline, ominous looking fellows all dressed in white and a security checkpoint, where I had to give my camera away for storage, which would be waiting for me after I'd seen Uncle Ho, provided I returned a tag with another number on it. Thankfully this one was made out of plastic.

On went the queue until we got to Uncle Ho's Mausoleum, no idea how long that took. He has a mausoleum, because the thing with Uncle Ho is that he's been dead for 43 years, but his body is still on display. Only not during his annual three month maintenance visit to Russia. That's what comrades do for comrades, I guess.

Speaking of comrades, 'Uncle Ho' is really Ho Chi Minh,  the most respected figure in Vietnam today. Uncle Ho is his man-of-the-people title, which he earned in full, at least from where I'm sitting. Ho Chi Minh was born in a rural village in 1890, grew up, travelled the world and eventually returned to Vietnam after 30 years. Armed with great oratory and a firm belief in communism, he led his people through all kinds of conflict and passed away in 1969, which means he never saw his country united. (Bad students are referred to the previous blogpost :) )

Right now, he's probably the world's best guarded corpse. The closer you get to the entrance, more guys in white show up, occasionally with guns. There is a red carpet that takes you to the entrance and these men are here to make sure you're going to think about 4 times before straying from the path. Inside, you're not allowed to stand still, you most always adopt a steady pace without making any sudden movements. The room where Ho Chi Min is on display is quite large, and has four armed men in white standing beside the body. Above Uncle Ho's head are two large tiles, one has the Vietnamese star on it, the other the famous hammer and sickle. Discipline was somewhat waning at the time of my visit as one of the guards couldn't help smiling at a motivated toddler who made a run for Uncle Ho. Irony also had its moment when a teenage Vietnamese girl walked in with a long sleeved t-shirt which had 'U.S.A' printed on it.

Statue of Uncle Ho

Once out of the mausoleum, my camera was returned to me and I moved on to see the other things the site had to offer. Among those were the presidential palace, which was built by the French and is off limits to pretty much everybody. Uncle Ho's garage -with cars-, his regular house and his house on stilts, all adding to the image of a wise, down to earth father of a country. There was a huge Ho Chi Minh museum which was quite interesting, but not without irony as the building is gigantic, and a welcome distraction from the heat outside. For details, come check the sites out yourself, or read my book, if I ever get to write it ;). Coming here will cost you about 3 dollars (and a flight to Hanoi).

You bet!

SPOILER: I did get my drinking bottle back as well.

Later on, I went to two temples throughout Hanoi, one was White Horse Temple or Bach Ma Temple which, as it turns out, really does have a wooden statue of a white horse. The other one, Ngoc Son Temple or Jade Mountain Temple, has an embalmed giant tortoise and is on Hoa Kiem Lake, which obviously isn't a mountain but Hanoi's most popular lake, for recreational purposes as well as a place to ditch your plastic. There should still be a tortoise in there somewhere, but I doubt it still draws any breath. Maybe it's just a clot of plastic bags shaped like a turtle.

Throwing up peace signs in front of a dead turtle

It was a peaceful and disciplined day, forgetting for a moment the early morning shoving. The contrast with my current place of residence could not be bigger. Here, there's loud Western music, a BBQ party going on, cheap alcohol, a pool table and a large flatscreen screening all kinds of Hollywood. The most common word used is 'dude', my roommates come in early in the morning, usually around the time I'm having my last hour of sleep.

There is a letter that comes after 'w' in the alphabet. This blog post had to be made without it, because it seems to be missing from my keyboard :). Spellchecks will follow.

Every magic gate should look like this, just a thought.