14th January - A Visit to Uncle Ho

Today the visits program kicks off. We have an early breakfast including freshly made omelettes and several cups of black tea. The coach arrives promptly and we head off under grey skies to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum across the city. Given the number of coaches around this is clearly a major draw. The area is also swarming with various types of security operative. When the coach pulls up the driver is immediately shooed away by some kind of policeman. He moves along a couple of coach lengths and we deboard there.

Dinh has briefed us to carry the minimum amount and definitely no water. Cameras have to be handed in and will be returned after we exit the Mausoleum so pictures relate to the later part of the visit. We join a short queue on the pavement which becomes a long queue quite quickly. We wait and watch the traffic for around 15 minutes until men in dark suits arrive to open a gate and allow us into the complex.

Women in blue uniforms harangue us to stay "two by two" as we move on. After a couple of hundred yards our column reaches the back of a serious looking stationary queue and we grind to a halt. There is no relaxation of the two by two rule and this is fiercely monitored. Dinh collects our cameras and hands them into a collection point. After a while the queue starts to shuffle forward. It extends around two sides of a large quadrangle and then around a corner out of sight. The gardens alongside our route are colourful and rather photogenic but you will have to take our word for that. 

After some stop go, 2x2 shuffling the Mausoleum comes into view. Quite an imposing edifice but clearly showing a Soviet influence. This section is policed by armed soldiers in white uniforms, smart but rather impractical. Eventually we enter the Mausoleum where the men in white are keen to ensure that a sufficiently reverent atmosphere is maintained. Chatterboxes are shushed and one of them gestures at D to remove his hands from his pockets. We are deemed suitable to climb the stairs to the main chamber where what looks suspiciously like a waxwork effigy is displayed behind glass on a central plinth. We are later told that Ho's body is taken back to Russia each year for some kind of overhaul.

We exit the Mausoleum and have our cameras returned. There are still plenty of security people but no requirement to remain in file. We are allowed to take pictures of the Mausoleum from a distance and then process around the remainder of the complex, which contains various places where Ho Chi Minh lived and/or worked between the defeat of the French in 1954 and hid death in 1969. Most imposing is the former residence of the French Colonial Governer General but that was considered too flash and only used for State occasions.

The last stop in the complex is at the Buddhist One Pillar Temple which looks old but is apparently a 1950's rebuild. The inside is spectacularly decorated and keeps the group's photographers busy. Dinh wants to keep us moving as we still have one more activity before lunch. The bus makes its way into the market area of the old city, passing down some narrow but colourful streets. We are deposited at the side of a wide dual carriageway that looks like some kind of inner ring road. A fleet of cycle rickshaws arrive and we are allocated one each. The tour is a bit of a let down. We basically ride down the inner ring road for twenty minutes, cut into the city for a block, and then ride back along a parallel street dotted with quaint shops such as Prada and Maserati. Dinh tells us that cycle rickshaws are on their way out and will be gone in two years.

Lunch is at another Vietnamese Speciality restaurant in the West Lake area of the city. Pork and noodle soup, coconut salad and chicken grilled in lemongrass were the highlights. Our afternoon activity is a visit to the Vietnamese Ethnicity Museum, rather more interesting than it sounds, mainly because of the garden filled with different types of tribal dwellings, some of them quite spectacular. Several are built up on stilts with very rudimentary stair/ladder arrangements for access.

As it starts to get dark we return to the hotel with orders to pack and prepare for an early start tomorrow. Tonight's supper is at an all you can eat BBQ spot where the food quantities were more impressive than the quality. On the way home the coach has to pull up at an ungated level crossing to allow a passenger train of about ten coaches cross. The metre gauge single line threads its way between buildings on its route across the city centre.