Hanoi Graceland

Hanoi Graceland is better known as the Ho Chi Minh complex. It is a designated area in the city where the Presidential Palace, the One Pillar Pagoda, the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum are located. Ho Chi Minh is like Elvis, resting eternally in a complex devoted to celebrating his life. (Except that he wasn't really known for his music.) Ho Chi Minh is revered as a nationalist communist leader that liberated the Vietnamese people from French colonialism.

Thousands of visitors, both foreign and domestic, flock to this site and take photos of 'artifacts' such as, "The pen that Ho Chi Minh once used", "His telephone", "His handkerchief" and "A sample of his writing". The essence of Ho Chi Minh is somehow embodied in the objects that he once touched.

And lining up to see the beautiful colonial architecture embodied in the yellow Presidential Palace is akin to lining up for Space Mountain in Disneyland. Busloads of tourists get dumped here on any given day. It makes you just want to break out in song, "It's a small, small world..."

There are also several trippy exhibitions (mounted perhaps during the late 1960-70s) which are large-scale artistic oeuvres that are supposed to represent Ho Chi Minh's contributions to Vietnam's prosperity in a symbollic manner. Much is open to interpretation. I remember walking into a room with a life-size model of the solar system and saying, "I don't get it". And then there was another exhibit with a huge table with fruit and a gigantic watermelon which left me scratching my head thinking, "Whaaaaaaa?". I'm sure the more I spend time in Vietnam, a lightbulb will go off in my head, "Riiiiiiight. The watermelon, Ho Chi Minh. Toooootally."

The entire complex is designed in such a way that it feels imposing. The buildings are not built to human scale, with the effect that one feels very small and powerless on the terrain. The vast open square that fronts the museum and the mausoleum is also quite vacuous, and this space tricks the eye into thinking that the buildings are much bigger than perhaps they actually really are. One just ends up feeling somehow humbled by it all. Maybe that was the point about the giant watermelon?

Unfortunately, I was unable to come face to face with this legendary man himself during my visit. Therefore, I will have to return to visit Uncle Ho in his place of rest on December 1st. The official story is that once a year, he goes out for "maintenance" in Russia. I don't think that entails lypo or botox.