Northern Viet Nam Day Six: Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, and Smoking

This is day six of Arie’s trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Sunday morning, more Hanoi. I took a moto to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, one of the sights I was determined not to miss. There was a massive line, but it was moving very quickly. At the first security checkpoint, they took my water bottle (“write your name on it so you can find it at the exit”, right), but let me keep my camera. I set off the X-ray machine, but no one cared. Through the checkpoint was another massive line, but this time there were Vietnamese police to make sure that everyone stayed in two lines—none of the typical Vietnamese approach to lining up, which is to not line up, but instead to form a giant mass and push everyone else as hard as you can while you fight your way to the front. That was what it was like at the security window where we had to check our cameras, but fortunately, I’m one of the largest people in Viet Nam, so I had a very easy time pushing my way to the front. Between the checkpoints, they took away everything everyone was carrying—nothing could be brought into the mausoleum. I’m not sure if it was for security reasons or propriety.

Then we were on the line that led into the mausoleum. The line was long enough that it wrapped around the grounds, through the checkpoint, and out onto the street. Outside was a little chaotic, and between the tour groups massed together and the Vietnamese people cutting in randomly, it was a bit hard to get through. But past the checkpoint, guards kept everyone in line. I’m told that in China, Mao’s mausoleum is similar except that the guards have guns and are much more serious about it.

The mausoleum is a large, squat, dignified cube of gray stone, with columns cut into the front and various soldiers standing around in white uniforms. We saw the “changing of the guard”, which Lonely Planet says rivals the formality and ceremony of Buckingham Palace. Lonely Planet is a liar. It’s just that these dudes walk up to these other dudes, take their place, and then the other dudes walk away. It’s true that they’re wearing uniforms, so that’s something.

We went inside. The line goes up some stairs, around a bit, and then into a large room with a high ceiling. The pathway goes around the outside of the room in a U-shape, and at the center is Ho Chi Minh’s body, locked in a glass box. There are soldiers standing around him, and his body is lit with bright yellow light (the rest of the room is dark). The line moves pretty quickly, so you don’t get much of a look at him.

Most Americans probably know Ho Chi Minh as that commie Vietnamese guy who hiked on some sort of trail in his efforts to stop Robin Williams from broadcasting on the radio. But here in Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh is a national hero. He’s highly respected both for his military leadership during the war and his civilian leadership afterwards.

Ho Chi Minh ("He who enlightens") spent his life fighting for Vietnamese independence from colonial powers. He petitioned at the Versailles peace conference that followed WWI, but when it became clear that the western powers would not willingly grant Viet Nam independence, he turned to Communism. During WWII he fought against the Japanese occupiers of Viet Nam, and when the war ended, he again attempted to appeal to the United States. In an interesting episode, he proclaimed the independence of Viet Nam at a rally where the Vietnamese and American national anthems were played, and quoted from the U.S. Declaration of Independence (the U.S. would not give him a copy, so he quoted from memory). But the west would not recognize his new government, preferring the French colonial government, and so the Viet Nam War (they call it the American War) began. He led Viet Nam until his death in 1969, and presided over the government as Prime Minister and then President. The mausoleum violates his wish to be cremated (he wrote that cremation saves precious farmland).

Ho Chi Minh also presided over the process of the subjugation of the south, which resulted in the deaths of millions of his countrymen. But much like the story of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S., history is written by the winners, and history seems to tolerate a significant amount of bloodshed as long as victory and peace are eventually achieved.

There were several types of visitors to his mausoleum: western travelers, Vietnamese schoolkids, Asian package tourists, and Vietnamese adults. The smallest group by far is western travelers; we’re dwarfed (not actually dwarfed because we are the tallest) by mobs of Chinese package tourists who are herded around and don’t seem especially interested in doing anything except taking photos of each other standing in front of the mausoleum smiling. There are a lot of Vietnamese schoolkids, most of whom are reverent because of the national veneration of Ho Chi Minh. Finally, there are the Vietnamese adults. I guess there’s no one in this country older than about 30 or so who didn’t serve in the army, and for many of them, Ho Chi Minh is a hero. We saw groups of people in military uniforms who were very emotional. Some of them had arrived with wreaths of flowers to place near the tomb. Even the poorest Vietnamese people clearly save up for a trip to the capital to visit the mausoleum; we saw a great deal of economic and social diversity among the Vietnamese visitors. Some of the former soldiers were missing limbs, presumably from combat. Because of the restrictions, they could not bring their crutches, and so they were carried through the tomb by their comrades.

The exit from the mausoleum was conveniently right in front of the Presidential Palace museum, which features such highlights as a “garage of Ho Chi Minh’s used cars”. Instead, we headed over to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Some students approached us outside and asked us some questions in English as part of an assignment for school; something similar had happened to me at a tourist site in Japan.

The HCM Museum had two floors. The first was the sort of thing you expect to find in a museum—an exhibit about soldiers sent from the North to the South during the war. But the top floor was totally crazy. It was filled with all sorts of inexplicable sculptures, weird artwork, and confusing displays. Lonely Planet says that the Edsel crashing through the wall is supposed to juxtapose the failure of American capitalism with the failure of the American military effort. I’d like to know what the strange warped table covered in giant fruit symbolizes. The most confusing thing was an exhibit about Coc Bo Cave, where some leaders of the northern government met. It was portrayed as a giant brain.

After the museum, we walked to a statue of Lenin, and then down some side streets to look at some other neighborhoods. Then we had lunch at a restaurant called Cha Ca La Vong. Cha Ca is a traditional Hanoi dish, pieces of monkfish prepared with vegetables and served on a little charcoal grill at the table. Cha Ca La Vong, like most Cha Ca restaurants on Cha Ca Street, serves only that dish (they have a little card to explain it to tourists). It was very tasty.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Little Hanoi, which turned out to be a serious mistake. It’s apparently listed in some popular French guidebook, which means it’s overpriced and crammed with French tourists. The food wasn’t great for the price, and I’m sure it was surrounded by places that were cheaper, better, and had air not filled with French cigarette smoke.

One of the annoying things about leaving Manhattan is that the rest of the world allows people to smoke in restaurants. One might think smokers would be polite enough to smoke outside while people are eating, and in most of Southeast Asia, people are very polite about their smoking. Smoking is fairly common, but few locals smoke near people who are eating, near babies, etc. However, European tourists light up anywhere and everywhere, and seemed almost to follow us around while chain-smoking. Stereotypically, Americans and Australians are the rudest travelers, but on this trip, every time someone was doing something unpleasant or inconsiderate, they were speaking German or French.

Continue to day seven.