visiting uncle ho

This morning, I woke up early. That in and of itself is quite the feat, but the story does not end there. The reason I got up early is because Ho Chi Minh welcomes visitors at his mausoleum in the morning. The body of Ho Chi Minh is, in fact preserved and visitors are marched through the beautiful, marble mausoleum during morning visiting hours. He lays, encased in a glass box, in a room guarded by several guards of the Vietnamese military who correct the posture of visitors to be most respectful to the fallen hero. There is so much pomp and circumstance surrounding a visit to the mausoleum. As we walked out, I turned to a friend of mine and said, "I don't think he would have wanted that." It's not that I knew Ho Chi Minh personally or that I am well-versed in the history of his life, but he lived as a simple man in a house on stilts rather than in the presidential palace where the people wanted him to live. I'll come back to this later, but I have to tell you about the rest of my day first.

The morning was spent watching a documentary about lesbians in Vietnam. This documentary was made by CSAGA, an NGO that I believe I mentioned in a previous post. Their organization works against domestic violence and violence against women in general. It was their (among other groups) circle painting event that I attended a short while ago. This documentary is the first of its kind in Vietnam. Gay men have recently gained more attention due to the HIV epidemic, but lesbians are not talked about much at all.

We went to the The Gioi (pronounced: te zoi) Publishing House to hear a very old (93) Vietnamese historian who gives a one-hour lecture on Vietnamese history. I was a little late due to map complications and being farther away from the place than I thought I was, but I heard a good deal of it. I can now pick up my story from earlier. Among other facts and stories, this historian told us that in Ho Chi Minh's last will and testament, he wished to have half of his ashes scattered in North Vietnam and the other half in South Vietnam in hopes that his country would one day be reunited. I didn't quite understand why he was in his mausoleum when his last wishes were not to be. When I asked for an explanation of this at the end of the lecture, Howie (Dr. Bennett's husband) explained to me that Ho Chi Minh's last will and testament was suppressed until the 1990s, until long after the mausoleum was built and had become a place of great reverence. I want to learn more about Ho Chi Minh in general, so I bought a few books at the publishing house: his final testament and his prison diary (both translated into English).

I am now in my favorite cafe and plan to hunker down to write more of my paper and put my presentation together. I wanted to leave you with a long-awaited video. I promised I would post the video of us doing Thriller for our roommates once it was made available. We've got it going pretty well in the beginning but then lose it towards the end. If you watch long enough, you can see us walk up to our roommates after the dance and their completely blank stares as the majority of them had no idea what we were doing. Also, note how we strategically slipped out from the party and hid ourselves all around the middle courtyard so that we could zombie walk out and surround Burcu who is screaming in the middle.

Enjoy!
Thriller