Back to Beyond

Ho Chi Minh has been dead for 56 years but his presence looms large over Hanoi. And why not. The man our 31 year old guide consistently refers to as Vietnam‘s greatest president only founded the Vietnam communist party, resisted and ultimately expelled the French, resisted the Japanese, declared Vietnamese independence and resisted and ultimately, posthumously, expelled the Americans. Not much room for any subsequent presidents to be greater.

Anyhow, we got up at 500 and out the door at 530 to get to the daily 600 am flag raising at the HCM mausoleum. Cool, dark and rainy. We were early, and started with a wander through the adjacent Buddhist temple grounds, festooned, if grounds can be festooned when it is dark and rainy, with little Buddhist and Vietnamese flags. Then on to something much more secular, though the reverence attached to HCM borders on religion. The mausoleum itself is not exactly warm and welcoming, and it comes as no surprise that it was built by the Soviets in the 70s. HCM can be viewed there, if that is your inclination, which would come as a surprise to him were he still alive, as his instructions were apparently to cremate his body and scatter the ashes in thirds in the north, middle and south of the country once the American War was over. But his successors decided that the will of the people was to be able to visit him indefinitely, hence the imposing example of Soviet monumentalism on display.

But the illuminated building was surprisingly beautiful in the rain. And the ceremony was surprisingly moving, notwithstanding or maybe because of its formality. There is a very large open square in front. A guard encourages onlookers rather unambiguously to move away from the area where the honour guard will march. A few white-uniformed soldiers move out and position themselves as a very spread out sort of cordon to mark off the no trespass zone. A squadron of these soldiers then marches in tight formation to the flagpole with martial music blaring over the loudspeakers, and three of them install and raise the flag, and then they march back inside the building. And then it is calm and quiet, the human cordon withdraws, and you can walk where you like and consider the dignity of what you got up early to see.

And then you go for some pretty wonderful Breakfast Pho on a sidewalk from a tiny morning-only spot, and get told about how it is now a Vietnamese word but that it comes from the French “feu”, like pot au feu, of which it apparently a Vietnamese derivation, and you don’t care whether the story is apocryphal or true because now you have a way of remembering how to pronounce it properly – not “phuh”, and certainly not “phoh”, but like “feu” in French – and that seems like the icing on the morning’s cake.