4th – A generous mix of genres

We left the hotel at 0830 to go and see the Ho Chi Minh Complex where we started with the mausoleum just outside the complex. It’s a massive soviet-style concrete-looking building containing a wax-figure of Ho Chi Minh as he wished to be cremated after his death. It wasn’t open today so we didn’t get to see it but if it had been the case we would potentially have been stuck in a 4+km long queue with people wanting to pass by seeing the figure. It is also only open 5 days a week in the mornings so the pressure is on when it is open.

From there we continued on entering the complex and seeing the buildings he had lived in, a bunker and the hospital he died in. It was all placed around a lake with coifish and seemed very serene ignoring the hordes of people. The last stop before leaving was the one-pillar pagoda which was basically what the name implies: a pagoda built on top of a single pillar.

Inside the Ho Chi Minh Complex. Here a lake with one of the houses that "Uncle Ho" lived.

The house he moved to the last years of his life.

The one-pillar pagoda.

From then on we were free until 1700 so some of us went to see the Literature Temple, (what was left of) Maison Centrale aka Hanoi Prison aka Hanoi Hilton and the museum inside, and the Woman’s History Museum.

The temple was interesting enough, in the end it was a temple of worship of Confucious, a scholar from before when the temple – then university – opened in 1070, which makes it one of the world’s oldest.

Inside the Literature Temple.

Confucious.

The Hanoi Hilton was quite interesting and not as horrifying as I had expected, and far from as bad as the two UXO museums, but still quite unnerving as places like that are. In the end I got the impression that while people were treated quite badly in there (but the American pilots shot down during the Vietnam war were treated significantly better) it didn’t feel much different that similar prisons around the world. The significance comes from the role it played in the country’s fight for independence from the French, with many of the survivors ending up working for the government. 

  

Inside the Hanoi Hilton.

The power lines have been looking quite chaotic on the entire trip, but this is the first time we saw it starting crawling out onto the sidewalk. 

The woman’s museum was pretty much Vietnam’s history seen through the eyes of the women. Unfortunately we had to rush a bit as we were running out of time getting back to the hotel in time.

At 1700 we met up and went to see a Water Puppet show. While the introduction was in English the entire show was in Vietnamese, so nothing really made any sense, but the live music was nice and the show itself looked good and was interesting to watch.

Leaving we went and had a nice dinner and greeted two new members of the group, both of them Brits. The group will continue south to Ho Chi Minh City where some will leave and others will join, and then continue back west through Cambodia and end up back in Bangkok.

After dinner some of us went out for drinks, we started in a nice and quiet place where it was easy to have normal conversations but being part of a younger group, we ended up in a place with very loud music. From there some of us went back to the hotel while others, just getting warmed up, went to a night club.