As we entered the central government complex, I had to turn my phone off. I will do my best to describe its majesty here. I was later allowed to photograph from a distance, but the interior of the mausoleum was off limits.
We walked across the avenue and headed towards the entrance of the parade grounds. Its route was flanked by officers in their white class A’s with red and gold trim. The size and scope of this impressive central government plaza were not lost on me. We moved past several checkpoints and were escorted toward the entrance of the fabled heroes’ resting place. We were instructed (and observed) to turn off our phones and clasp our hands together behind us as we continued along the parade ground. Respect and reverence were both demanded here and so tangible they could almost be snatched from the air. We were ordered to march in two single-file lines toward the final resting place of the first president of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh. The mausoleum began to loom over the horizon to my left in its multicolored granite and marble facade. We continued down a plastic “red carpeted” staircase whose step edges were held in place by gold-laden rods.
As we continued deep into the marbled structure, we emerged into a large vaulted room that interred the ageless hero. An auburn light illuminated his body, his hands resting gently at his waste. A walkway squared upon his shoulders, a color guard protecting his flanks. At his head, along the tall marbled wall, two rows of red granite tile cascaded down the 3 storied room. One is represented on the left by the symbolic hammer and cycle, the other by the golden Vietnamese star. Communist iconography was everywhere. Pictures of Lenin and Trotsky dotted the landscape.
Finding yourself in a world so often vilified in your youth is a unique feeling. Communism carries a negative connotation for those my age who grew up in the twilight of the Cold War. Images of Reagan and Gorbachev with his plum wine birthmark forever fill my mind’s eye with that iconic moment. I saw the fall of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall, and Eastern Europe liberated. Yet, deep in the jungles of southeast Asia, the hammer and sickle still reigned supreme.
I can not express here the emotions that overwhelmed me as I spent my day in deep contemplation and reflection on the life and times of a man who, in his strive for an independent Vietnam, caused my fellow countrymen and our families death, pain, and suffering for a cause we didn’t often understand.
We exited the mausoleum and stepped back out into the grand parade grounds. Across the campus stood the headquarters of the central communist government. A beautiful example of Cold War concrete architecture with its jade-colored rotunda atop this towering structure. The red and gold flag of the nation gently blows in the breeze at its roof’s center.
I was instructed that I could use my phone again, and I tried to catch up on my photography. We walked towards the bright yellow-colored presidential palace that sat beside Ho Chi Minh’s pond. As his countrymen affectionately call him, Uncle Ho had his home during the war, and almost everything else he owned or touched preserved in perpetuity. His stilt house, where he wrote his edicts and conducted his efforts to liberate his fellow countrymen, was maintained to almost perfection on the pond’s banks. The trees he regarded so highly still lined its shores, where he walked and contemplated his country’s future. He was a man who had become larger than life here. He had transcended beyond president and liberator to a fabled deity. It was clear to me that 1,000 years from now, Uncle Ho would be even more mythological in his deeds and that I was witnessing the infant days of a new religion.
