Hanoi, Koto restaurant, Ho Chi Minh Museum, Hanoi Hilton

At 6am the night train rolls into cool and cloudy Hanoi. The past four days have been boiling and it feels great stepping out to fresh air instead. We leave the luggage in hotel and head to Koto restaurant for breakfast. It is a not-for-profit restaurant and vocational training program that is changing the lives of street and disadvantaged youth in Vietnam. I enjoy the best breakfast I have had during the whole trip by far.

After few mugs of good strong coffee, I am ready to begin exploring the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Hanoi has been the capital of Vietnam since the 11th century, so I am guessing there will be a lot to explore.

First we head to French quarters. Most of tehe buildings are embassies and classical architectural masterpieces from the French colonial era. When Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) was an ugly concrete, rough, overcrowded and chaotic, Hanoi is green and spacious. It has two lakes, wide French style streets, a charismatic old town and romantic feel to it that I did not expect at all.

We try to get to the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh lies embalmed (in the tradition of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh is a glass sarcophagus). However, it is the first Saturday of the summer holidays, so the queues are already kilometres long – and it is not even nine in the morning yet! I promise myself I will be back another day – it must be worth it.

What Vietnamese do on Saturdays

I am very surprised to see the amount of people queuing to see Uncle Ho and the whole embalming business. My guide tells that Ho Chi Minh wished to be cremated and his ash buried in three different parts; one part in north Vietnam, second to the central and third to South Vietnam. He wrote:

Not only is cremation good from the point of view of hygiene but also it saves farmland.

Instead he gets to lie in his glass coffin in the mausoleum visited by thousands of people every day. This was the choice of the government.

Since uncle Ho has already so many visitors today, we visit Ho Chi Minh Museum instead.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi is the preserver of everything memorable related to the great revolutionist, Ho Chi Minh. The Museum consists of five extensive floors and was inaugurated on 2nd September, 1990, celebrating the 100th birthday occasion of the beloved President.

It turns out to be is by far the oddest museum I have ever visited, as bizarre from outside as it is from inside. It is designed in the shape of a lotus flower “a symbol of President Ho’s noble character”, informs my guide. The building looks very far from lotus flower to me.

A great sample of Russian architecture

Just when I am thinking how the museum feels Russian in its communist style architecture of concrete, marble, wood, gold, dust and dirt, the guide tells me that it IS actually built by Russians.

A huge statue of Ho Chi Minh greets the visitors. Everything inside the museum is also random and unexpected, I am simply in awe. Displays have a message, such as peace, happiness or freedom. The rooms are full of random art and weird sculptures.

Hello and welcome

I have simply no idea how anything inside relates to Hi Chi Minh. Lonely Planet guidebook describes the place quite accurately:

It’s probably worth taking an English-speaking guide, as some of the symbolism is hard to interpret.

Hard? Impossible I would rather say, but everything is funny and inspiring at the same time. The random massive fruits on a wonky table the Alice in Wonderland style are superb, a bizarre car sculpture driving through the wall, a huge brick pipe rising from the ground…

Fruit from a wonky table, anyone?

I seriously do not have an idea what any of these displays mean, but it all is really alternative and very coolindeed. In its Russian acid trip, the museum is irresistibly interesting – whoever planned it was definitely in the zone. The rest of the group doesn’t quite get my excitement, but I would give five stars to it any time.

Me enjoying the Guernica section

Next to the museum lies Chua Mot Cot, a one pillar pagoda built by Emperor Ly Thai Tong (who ruled in 1028-54). It is shaped like a lotus blossom rising from the sea of sorrow and it is meant to have magical powers; praying in front of it will give good luck and a baby son. “If there was a pagoda for Good Men I would definately climb thousand stairs to pray”, tells my Canadian friend to me when she hears this story. According to the legend, Ly Thai Tong was childless and dreamt that he met an eight handed Buddha Avalokiteshvara, who handed him a baby son while sitting a lotus flower. He then married a peasant girl that he had met and she bore him a son. After the son was born Ly Thai Tong built the pagoda.

Most of the women in our tour group rush up the stairs to pray, but I don’t believe praying helps, so I just hang around and watch a married Australian couple from our tour climbing up the stairs together to the pagoda. Whilst praying for a baby boy, the tall husband hits his head to the roof pillar. I can’t stop laughing. I hope that the blow means something good, twins perhaps?

Praying for a baby son

Next stop is a French colonial style presidential palace. It was built by the French in 1906 for the governor general of Indochina. Currently it is held as an administrative office of the Government. Ho Chi Minh never wanted to live there and the story goes: when he came to power and was given this palace to live in, he told people that the place stinks. The servants spent days carefully cleaning it and after the hard work he was then brought into the palace again. Uncle Ho then explained that he had not meant that it stinks because of dirt, but because it smelled of French. Ouch.

French colonial style presidential palace

Ho Chi Minh had a very ascetic lifestyle and he first chose to live in a small house next to the palace. It had a bedroom, a dining room (display plates were catered for one person only, he never married) and a small office with photos of Karl Marx and Lenin hanging on the wall. The choice of photos is not very surprising.

Ho Chi Minh’s office desk, Karl Marx and Lenin

Later, a small stilt house was built for him, according to his wishes. It is a tiny, beautiful, Japanese style house, which served as his residence 1958-69. It has only two rooms; a bedroom and the office. It overlooks a little pond surrounded by grapefruit trees. I learn that grapefruit was Ho Chi Minh’s favourite fruit. It is very modest residence, but its minimalism feels very good. I think the stilt houses have good vibes, shame the stilt style doesn’t work up in the northern hemisphere. Now that I think of the yearly floods of some parts of England, the stilt houses could actually improve a lifestyle.

Uncle Ho’s one-bedroom stilt house

Ho Chi Minh is a saintlike character. No one in Vietnam criticises him. It is amazing to see the amount of people who are visiting his house, museum and mausoleum every day. I wonder how long this will last. The stories local people tell about him paint a picture of a humble flawless monk-lifestyled saint, who loved his country more than anything else in the world. According to all-knowing Wikipedia:

In Vietnam today, he is regarded by the Communist government with almost god-like status in a nationwide personality cult, even though the government has abandoned most of his economic policies since the mid-1980s.

I continue to the remaining part of the former Hoa Lo prison in the centre of Hanoi – known as Hanoi Hilton by the American POWs during the Vietnam war. The prison was opened in 1896 and was the largest prison of the North Vietnam. Two thirds of the original prison was demolished in 1993 to make way to Hanoi Towers; a huge office, apartment and shopping complex. Times move on.

Hoa Lo prison before the partial demolition

The Hoa Lo prison held Vietnamese political prisoners during the French rule and later American pilots during the Vietnam war. The propaganda photos about the American prisoners are the most interesting part of the exhibition. The prisoners smile to the camera and seem to have great time. The photos don’t match the description I have read about the torturing. My Lonely Planet guide for South-East Asia describes:

Famous prisoners included Pete Peterson, who later became the first US Ambassador of a unified Vietnam in 1995, and Senator John McCain, who cannot raise his arms above his head because of his torture…and tried to commit suicide twice while imprisoned.

The black and white photos taken by Vietnamese photographers demonstrate how well the American prisoners were treated in Hanoi Hilton, just another classy sample of war propaganda. Some of the remaining prison cells had wax characters demonstrating how the prisoners were chained together.

This is how prisoners were chained in Hoa Lo

I walk around Hoan Kiem lake (Lake of the Restored Sword). Everything is sunny, green and beautiful. Another legend is related to the lake and its funny name: In the mid-15th century, Emperor Ly Thai To was given a magical sword from heaven to fight away the Chinese from Vietnam. He succeeded and one day while boating out, a giant golden tortoise emerged, grabbed the sword and disappeared into the depths of the lake giving the sword back to its divine owner. It is beautiful, but I don’t see any turtles

A bridge leading to an island, Hoan Kiem lake, Hanoi

In the evening our group gathers together for a dinner in a famous Hanoi restaurant Cha Ca La Vong, restaurant that only serves fried fish cooked in one specific way. The restaurant hasn’t changed its menu for over 150 years. I learn that the restaurant not only has maintained its menu that long, but that it has become so well established and so famous that the whole street has been named after it.

The food is great! Before going back to the hotel, we stop to Fanny’s ice cream bar by Hoan Kiem Lake. Things could not be better.