Our second full day in Hanoi started with a dive into Vietnamese history and ended with another fun stroll around Hanoi led by our guide. We started with a visit to the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, which is kind of a top attraction as it were. Now I should point out that throughout this trip we have been in countries that were run by single parties. Laos and Vietnam are still officially Communist, and Cambodia’s ruling party is dominated by former members, but this was the first time we felt like we were in a Communist country.

Ho Chi Minh is revered in Vietnam. But getting into his tomb felt very regimented and rigid. Sort of Soviet. One of our traveling party had a plastic panic whistle on her key chain that she was made to remove on entry. (It was later returned.) I guess they feared she might show disrespect by blowing it in the mausoleum.

The line to get in wasn’t long, and it was quick trip to see the great man. It’s this year’s mummy after all the Egyptian ones we viewed a year ago. No photos allowed, of course, and there were plenty of uniformed guards to enforce the rules.

Uncle Ho, as he’s known in the country, has been dead since 1969, and it was the Soviets who did the original embalming, ala Lenin. According to our guide, Ho’s desire was to be cremated and his ashes spread about the country, so the fact he’s still on display is weird. Our guide also suggested that his embalming might have a short lifespan at this stage, so old Ho might finally get his wish.

After leaving the mausoleum itself we got our cameras back and were free to snap away. On the grounds one can find his old home and office, and the mansion the former French Colonial governor used to occupy. Ho didn’t use it except for possibly diplomatic receptions.

The fun thing is that there were a number of Vietnamese student groups on the grounds, and let’s just say they made us feel like rock stars. They were mostly around age 14, could say hello in English but not much else, but very much wanted their pictures taken with us.

For the majority we were probably the first Westerners they had ever seen, and to be able to show off pictures with us would be something of a coup for them. We posed for several pictures. As one fellow traveler said, now we know what the Beatles felt like. (Probably not, but you get the idea.) They were very excited.

Later we went to visit a museum of Vietnamese ethnography, mostly as an introduction to our next stop, the hill country that borders China. There we will interact with some of the Hmong tribe who live in the area. The museum itself was kind of interesting, but I think the real thing will probably top it.

After lunch we went to the original home of “egg coffee.” It’s a Vietnamese thing. It started in 1946 as a way to simulate steamed milk because they didn’t have milk readily available at the time. Instead they added egg yolk and sugar. Not my thing, but Pat enjoyed it.

After a rest, Thai led some of us on another walk over to Huan Kiem Lake, this time walking us through the upscale shopping area. Part of the road is closed to traffic on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, which was a wonderful respite from the normal street craziness. There we happened upon a mural of, drum roll, Ho Chi Minh, but it was amusing that it now faces a McDonald’s.

We saw a couple of interesting pagodas, one dedicated to a former king, the other to the Buddha. We topped that with a visit to St. Joseph’s Church. About 10% of Vietnamese practice Catholicism and the government appears not to have interfered. There was mass going on, but given it was in Vietnamese we had no idea what part of the Mass it was. But we listened for a while.

It was another full day. Tomorrow we pile into the van to drive to Sapa in the hill country. We are only taking enough stuff for two days that will involve some trekking.