Chilly China

It's Saturday in Shanghai and time to get caught up again. Fortunately, we haven't been doing a lot lately, so perhaps I can actually get caught up as opposed to merely intending to do so. I've titled this "Chilly China" for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's cold here. Not as cold as Seattle but a lot chillier than we've been experiencing until now. We knew it had to happen. The good thing is that by the time we've been in Beijing for a few days we'll be acclimatized to Seattle weather. I guess that's a good thing. The other thing that's sort of "chilly" about China is that they're a lot better at blocking sites than Viet Nam was. Now I have to actually pay money to enable me to get around the blockage, not only for Nancy's Facebook but for me to be able to access Blogger. Oh well, at least it's doable. For a while I thought I would have to cease my posts but, as you can see, here I am.

I last posted about our walking around Hanoi old town on Wednesday followed by our 20,000 or so calorie dinner. The next day we (appropriately) skipped breakfast and headed for Ho Chi Minh's resting place. Apparently Ho Chi Minh wished to be cremated after his death, but once he was dead his ability to control things diminished dramatically. Instead of being cremated he was put on permanent display in Hanoi. You are not allowed to take a camera into the mausoleum nor are you allowed to have your hands in your pockets. Everyone must be dressed "appropriately". There was a very long line waiting to get into the mausoleum, but the guards keep everyone moving along expeditiously, so it didn't take too long. Here's the mausoleum building.

Not having my camera, I didn't get a photo of the long line snaking its way to the mausoleum. Nor did I get a photo of the huge square on which the mausoleum sits. It's really quite imposing. There are several other buildings in the area. There's the presidential palace, built by the French.

You can see Ho Chi Minh's cars.

And you can see the "House on Stilts". Ho Chi Minh did not want to live in the grand Presidential Palace and instead lived in this very modest "House on Stilts" on the side of this artificial lake. It was difficult to get a photo of the house. It's at the end of the yellow wall.

There were guards guarding the "stilts".

We dutifully trooped up the stairs and past the windows, seeing how modestly the father of modern Viet Nam lived.

There's also a museum.

In addition to being about Ho Chi Minh himself

it attempts to put into historical and social context both the communist movement in general and Viet Nam's communist experience in particular.

Everything closed up at 11:30 a.m., so we soon were back on our way, back past the skinny buildings with shops below,

back past the scary, fascinating electric wire spaghetti complexes,

and past the predatory hordes of motor bikes.

For lunch we had pho, that classic Hanoi dish.

Then we went back to our room and crashed. We had thought we might go to see the water puppet show but didn't. That evening we simply went out to a seafood restaurant and then once more to the lake to see how it looked at night.

Then to bed. Early the next morning we would be off to Shanghai.