Sunday 6 Apr 2003
Hanoi, Vietnam
Getting funky with Ho Chi Minh
Had to get up bright and early today to catch the Ho Chi Minh mausaleum before it closed (only open from 8am-11am) and as soon as I arrived I was greeted with a 1000 person queue!
Thankfully it was moving pretty quickly so it was only a matter of minutes before I was inside the mausaleum and staring at the waxen corpse of Ho Chi Minh himself!! It was almost surreal as 4 soldiers stood guard around a dais where HCM lay in a glass coffin. He looked surprisingly healthy for a dead guy (maybe this was due to the red blush they put on every year when he returns to Russia for maintenance!) but it was certainly a jaw-dropping sight. Plus (as a friend of mine had pointed out earlier) he looks surprisingly buff for an old guy so they must have stuffed his chest to make him seem bigger.
The weather in Hanoi is pretty dire at the moment so I want to leave asap (its pretty much like Dublin in the autumn... foggy, cold, wet.. but also humid... perfect combination to get the flu even if its not SARS).
Ive just booked an overnight return ticket to Sapa so thats where Ill be tomorrow... for the rest of the day Ill be travelling around the old quarter again and might check out a museum or two