Ho Chi Minh's Place

Yesterday we visited the place where Ho Chi Minh (HCM to those familiar with him) is memorialized. It is a trafficless park area which houses the HCM Mausoleum, HCM's stilthouse, the HCM Museum, and another house and his garage with his cars.


This Mausoleum was built by help from Russian architects as one can tell by the solid, uninspired block-like design. His body is in there but has to go to Russia once a year to maintain the preservation of the body. We couldn't go inside because it was closed for maintenance.

One of the long list of regulations for entering the buildings contained the following rule (click to enlarge):


The stilthouse is interesting as it is quite simple and serene located on a lake and lovely garden area near the opulent French Govenor's Palace from colonial days.


This is a view from the veranda that surrounds the second floor:
After spending an hour at the Museum that tells his life story as well as the nationalist struggle for independence from the French and the re-unification struggle with the Americans. It is very interesting to get this point of view.

Then we visited the Ethnolgraphic Museum that has materials from the 54 distinct ethnic groups that live in Vietnam. More about that later as we will be visiting some minority hill-tribe groups in the northwest mountauns near the Chinese border.

Late in the afternoon we visited the site of the first university that was founded in 1072. And then visited the Tran Quoc Pagoda on the shore of the large West Lake: