Son La, Vietnam (March 23)
1. Game addicted Vietnamese
2. Pretty face to the street
3. Firewood for sale |
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3-29-2008
A visit to Uncle Ho’s Mausoleum. It is Saturday morning and we are off by taxi to start our day of sight seeing in Hanoi. The taxi crawls through the traffic clogged streets seemingly on a collision course at every corner. We near the Mausoleum and see lines of tourists stretching and snaking through the palace compound for hundreds of yards. Oops, the travel guide said it would be crowded but we had no idea it would be like this. We are herded into the line by twos by uniformed soldiers and enter a covered walk which takes us to the entrance. No camera, no shorts – I am hauled out of line (Art is wearing shorts) and sent back to the entrance to get a pair of pants to go over my shorts. Guess what? They are shorts also, just a little longer and cap my knee. Herded back into line with Judee, we shuffle onward and approaching the entrance we are told to stop talking by another soldier. Into the ice box we go, up three flights of stairs to a small dimly lit room where we file around Uncle Ho’s lighted casket with his embalmed body on display, a white ghost floating in the dark. Outside our cue finally breaks up, we retrieve the camera, return my shorts and head for the Ho Chi Min Museum.
Hanoi
1. Legal shorts - Ho Chi Min Mausoleum
2. Surreal Ho Museum exhibit
3. Bia Hoi - street draught beer |
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The Ho Chi Min Museum is a marvel of over the top art gallery style museum with really intriguing displays of Ho’s writings, his development and rise to power, and the surrounding world influences of his time. The travel books suggest it is a surreal experience to float through the displays and we both agreed. The Vietnamese mob this whole complex; they revere Ho! We felt the strict military presence: starched uniforms and an authoritarian bearing that was a little too much for our liking but it was enlightening.
3-31-2008
Today Art gets his new tooth and we opened the internet this morning to see that Race Face is going to ship us two new bottom brackets!! Hoorah! Life is too good to us. We awoke today thinking we were going to have to alter our plans – head to Singapore, Bangkok or even the US to get ourselves back on the road. Many thanks to Julian and RaceFace!
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