Visiting Uncle Ho

The only other time I’ve been in Hanoi I couldn’t visit Ho Chi Minh because he was in Russia for maintenance! He goes every year. He’s just come back and (I guess) is looking at his embalmed best. There are strict rules about putting your bag in a store, then being given a smaller bag to put valuables in, but you have to leave cameras in that bag somewhere else and pick it up again from yet another different place. It’s unnecessarily complicated! Then everyone files past Uncle Ho. They shepherd you through quite quickly and I was the last of one group allowed in so I didn’t get to see how many Vietnamese people react to seeing the leader. The guards look very smart in crisp white uniforms. I wonder if they guard Uncle Ho overnight as well, or only when he’s open to the public.

I didn’t get to see the other two communist leaders who also didn’t want to be put on show. In Moscow, Red Square was blocked with an arena for an event and I couldn’t get across in time to see Lenin and in Beijing I got there too late and the cloakroom wouldn’t take my bag. I could have gone in if I’d been prepared to leave my bag unattended in the middle of Tiananmen Square as some people were doing.


In the afternoon I went to the Temple of Literature which I’ve been to before and like. It’s a little oasis of calm (but not quiet as you can still hear the motorbikes and horns) in the middle of the city. It’s a Confucius temple that dates from 1070. It was also Vietnam’s first university. The best doctorate students who passed the Royal examinations got their names carved on a stone that stands on the back of a stone tortoise (see extra). Will stone tortoises turn out to be better as a long term record than the internet?