There were a few reasons we wanted to cut our Ha Long Bay trip short. The first being that we felt like we had seen enough of the bay. With beautiful green polluted water, the hundreds of islands provide a lovely backdrop that we had enjoyed. Since we weren't going on a cruise, we had no further business there. Secondly, we wanted to visit the mausoleum of the great leader Ho Chi Minh. The last reason was arguably the most important: Ben needed to pick up his visa for China. The Application Center is closed on the weekend, and flights to the Thai beaches are only in the mornings, so if we didn't manage to retrieve the visa Friday, we would have to pick it up Monday, then fly on Tuesday. That's three extra wasted days in Hanoi and we were eager to get back to Thailand already.
The Center had phoned the day prior to confirm the visa would be ready Friday, and sure enough it was. Any time we don't have our passports on us for any reason makes us slightly uneasy, but we were happy to get his Israeli passport back and cross the 'China visa' chore off the to-do list.
After the Visa Center we bussed directly to see the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. A combination of online misinformation and poor research resulted in us not being able to enter the grounds. On several websites it said the mausoleum would be open on Fridays, but that was evidently not the case. We could only see the building from the outside. Also, we were lucky enough to see the changing of the guards, which we love to see! We have seen it in London, Sofia, and Athens. For some reason, Nadine got snapped at by one of the security guards for propping her cell phone on our selfie stick/tripod. It didn't seem like that would be a good reason for the ribbing she took, but we weren't doing anything else that would cause him to take notice of us.
We were disappointed that we couldn't see HCM's mausoleum, but there is some humor here. When we were in Beijing a few years ago, we specifically went to see Mao Zedong's mausoleum and missed out both times. One time we arrived late, and the other time it simply wasn't open for unexplained reasons.
Also once in Moscow, Ben attempted to see Lenin's mausoleum, but missed out there also. He went on a 7am morning walking tour, and while waiting for the tour to begin heard a father and a son speaking Spanish and recognized something in their voice. For some reason, and to this day still doesn't know exactly why, He approached them and asked, in Hebrew, if they spoke Hebrew also. The father responded in Hebrew that he understands a little bit. I asked them in English if they were from San Diego, and he no, but he has many friends there. My third question was if they knew the Bialostozky family. The father's eyebrows went up in shock, confirmed that he did, and Salomon is his dear friend who had visited him in Mexico City only two weeks prior. He told me his name was Jaime Murrow and his daughter Daniella is friends with Nadine also. I told him I am on a layover in Moscow, and am on my way back to the US now to visit Nadine and ultimately be together in Israel. It was the coincidence of ALL coincidences that we would happen to be on the same walking tour in Moscow, of all places. We spent the day together, participating in the tour, visiting the Jewish Museum of Tolerance, eating a kosher lunch, and walking around the Red Square. Finally we were going to enter the mausoleum of Lenin, but the Murrows were taking their sweet time. We knew we needed to be there by 15:00 I think, but they were dragging their feet. Eventually I apologized and told them that I was going to break away, lest we miss the cut off time to enter. I arrived in line at 14:55, where I was denied by a hardened, steel-eyed Russian woman who told me simply "No Enter, No Enter." I partially blame it on the Murrows, partially on my own passivity.
The point of the story is that Communists love mausoleums, and for one reason or another, the Capitalist Gods have prevented us from seeing the dear leaders up close!
Below are a couple fun bonus pictures of a wonderful group of model citizens. In the first picture, buddies Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh share an adorable moment chumming it up over a pots of tea. In the second picture, Ho Chi Ming made a new friend, the one and only Great Leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, who is nonchalantly throwing up the peace sign. Ho Chi Ming doesn't seem to be having any of it.
Near the mausoleum square was a few pagodas, along with life lessons about Karma and what happens in the next life according to how one behaves in the prior life. It was really interesting and amusing at the same time. Some of the graphics made us chuckle.
We continued on to the another UNESCO site, the Thang Long Imperial Citadel, which served as the political center of Vietnam for 13 consecutive centuries. Next to the Citadel stands the Hanoi Flag Tower, which proudly displayed the Vietnamese flag on the day of the Hanoi's liberation from the French colonialists. It also served as an observation point during the war with the US.
Across the street from the Tower stands the Man, the Myth, the Legend himself, Vladimir Lenin.
The day was coming to an end shortly and it was clear the weather wasn't going to hold up much longer, so we began our hour walk home. On the way, we stopped at the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest Buddhist temple in Hanoi, dating back to the 6th century.
We had realized that throughout the business of the day, we had sort of forgotten to eat. When we arrived on the street of our hotel, we got super lucky and found an amazing burger joint that hit that spot. It was our first proper western meal since South Africa.
Our trip to Hanoi and the Vietnam in general had concluded after three weeks. We visited Saigon, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Ha Long Bay, and Hanoi. Overall we learned a great deal about the history of Vietnam, as well as some America's as well. It was difficult to communicate with the locals since most of them either don't speak English, nor did they hav much interest in chatting with us. To be fair, there are thousands of tourists in and out of the country, so chances are we have less insight to offer them as they do to us. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time here, ate a ton of Pho and Banh Mi, but we are ready for our next destination for some R&R, which is right up there are the top of the list: the beaches of Thailand.
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