On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Auntie Anne
As I said, Hanoi is a vibrant, interesting city. I ended up taking a lot of pictures!
We also visited the Ho Chi Minh Complex. I am interested in learning more about him because he is a revered figure and not the vaguely evil villain I thought he was when I was growing up.
Building and street in the French Quarter. Our hotel was in the French Quarter as well.
Man exercising on the equipment at the Botanical Garden
We visited an ethnological museum, which was very interesting. A group of young women in traditional dress were taking pictures for Tet to post on their Facebook and Instagram pages
Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. His embalmed body can be viewed here, but since it was so close to Tet, the tomb was closed. (I was not upset about it being closed.) Apparently, only four people have ever undergone this Soviet embalming for display process: Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Kim Jong-II and Kim II-sun
The French built this Presidential Palace. The color yellow signifies power in the Vietnamese culture, so all French governmental buildings were painted yellow. According to our guide, while the French were in power, Vietnamese who approached within a mile of the palace without permission were executed.
Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the palace when he came into power because it was too grand- although official government meetings of state were held there.
This is a three room hut built by the French for their electricians. Ho Chi Minh lived here instead of the palace for a while.
This traditional Thai house was built for Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War. It is complete with an underground bunker, and he lived here until the last two years of his life, when he moved to a hospital house.
This lake with surrounding garden is between the palace and the three houses Ho Chi Minh occupied. He would feed guests fish he caught in this lake and mangoes he grew in his garden.
Water puppetry is a Vietnamese tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century, when it originated in the villages of the Red River Delta, in the north of the country.
The puppets are made out of wood and then lacquered. The shows are performed in a waist-deep pool. A large bamboo rod supports the puppet under the water and is used by the puppeteers, who are normally hidden behind a screen, to control them. Thus the puppets appear to be moving over the water. When rice fields would flood, the villagers would entertain each other using this form of puppet play.
The water puppet show we saw was a series of short vignettes. A traditional Vietnamese orchestra provided background music accompaniment. The theme of the skits ws rural and has a strong reference to Vietnamese folklore. They told of day-to-day living in rural Vietnam and Vietnamese folk tales that are told by grandparents to their grandchildren.
Deputinize America
I skipped the water puppet show when I went there. Hit a nice restaurant instead on the other side of the lake with a nice view of the city.
We did make it a point to go to the bun cha place where Obama ate with Bourdain, and it was fantastic (and cheap).
bmoak
One of the most unusual things about Ho Chi Minh I learned (from one of Bourdain’s bocks covering his trips to Vietnam) was that he was a trained chef and actually lived and worked in the U.S for a while as a young man in Boston at the famed Parker House hotel. Since has was a pastry chef there, he was almost certainly whipping up batches ofParker House rolls and Boston cream pies.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I could have sworn that I once heard that Ho Chi Minh considered George Washington as a role model for what he was trying to do in Vietnam. And that before the US started fighting in Vietnam, he would have gladly allied with the United States if US policy hadn’t been propping up the South Vietnamese government.
Doug
The style of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum draws on Lenin’s tomb on Red Square in Moscow. Mongolia also had one like it when I was there in 1999, but apparently they dismantled it in 2005.
Stalin was also embalmed after his death, and he shared the mausoleum with Lenin until 1961, when Soviet leaders partly changed their minds about him so they stuck his remains in the Kremlin wall instead.
Gary K
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: See this account.
Mike in Pasadena
It is fascinating to see your pjctures. Thank you as i will never see Vietnam.
MazeDancer
Really good pics and info!
ExPatExDem
All that Ho Chi Minh ever wanted was self-determination for the Vietnamese people. The US could have made him an ally, but chose not to, due to anti-Asian racism.
Lt. Condition
I live just across the isthmus to the north of HCM’s mausoleum! Glad you had fun here, it’s a weird but lovely city, hah. Not sure how much you saw outside of the Old Quarter and the tourist stuff, but it’s striking just how different those areas are from much of the city.
Auntie Anne
@Lt. Condition: We did mostly tourist stuff, which is about what you’d expect in 4 days. But the one thing we did do that’s not in the pictures was have dinner with a family in Hanoi. (Posting any of those pictures seemed like an invasion of privacy, so I didn’t.). They lived in a house outside of the tourist areas – it was fascinating to meet and talk with them.
I would love to go back to Hanoi and really explore on my own. It is an odd place to these Western eyes, but lovely, lively, and charming. I will confess though that I found crossing the streets in Hanoi utterly terrifying.
Ruckus
@Auntie Anne:
I will confess though that I found crossing the streets in Hanoi utterly terrifying.
That can apply to many cities in many countries. I’ve traveled and worked (professional sports) in 49 of the states and traveled to much of countries surrounding the Atlantic, from Antartica to the north of Norway and countries in between and I can attest that in many of our states crossing the street is a risky and often terrifying ordeal. And actually finding a place that it wasn’t risky was far more difficult.
Lt. Condition
@Auntie Anne: Learning to cross the street is a universal rite of passage on moving here, hah. Everyone feels that way because, well, it is.
Amy
@Lt. Condition: During our visit to Vietnam, crossing the street was such an adventure! Once I realized that I wasn’t going to be hit (perhaps naively so), I enjoyed the challenge of stepping out into the street and keeping my eyes focused on the other side. Truly an amazing experience. I loved my visit there and was able to travel through the Mekong delta up to Hanoi. Beautiful country and people.