A game I would play in one of my English classes was to give students a list of questions that they had to answer (and then guess each other’s answers). One of the standard questions I had devised was “Name a Hero”. With the first group I tried this with, every student’s response was “Ho Chi Minh”. “Wow”, I thought. “Unanimous”. In the next class, one student responded with “Spiderman”, and everyone else said Ho Chi Minh. Results in my other classes were the same.  I began to understand the reverence Vietnamese people have for this legendary man…

Educated in Paris and influenced by Stalin and Mao, “Uncle Ho” was a Communist revolutionary who forever changed the face of Vietnam. He led the Viet Minh independence movement and was leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 until 1969, when he passed away. He is an integral part of Vietnam’s history in the 20th century, and to say the people admire him is an understatement.

I cannot emphasize the love the Vietnamese people have for this man. His face appears on every banknote, the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after his death, and the vast majority of locals speak lovingly of him.

His body is on display at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, in a granite structure modeled after Lenin’s tomb in Moscow. Interestingly enough, Ho Chi Minh wished to be cremated and his ashes spread across Vietnam, but he also expressed his wish against being canonized and, well, that didn’t quite go as requested either.

Jen and I made a visit to the Mausoleum while in Hanoi. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m seen quite a few mummies in my time so it took me by surprise to see how well-preserved his frail little body was. It honestly looked like he was simply taking a nap. The visitors stream past him quietly and reverentially, paying their respects. It is truly like a pilgrimage for many, and a highlight of Vietnam for myself.

"It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"