The Ho Chi Minh complex
- The Ho Chi Minh complex consists of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, stilt house and museum, the Presidential palace and the One Pillar Pagoda. To the west of Hoan Kiem Lake is the Ho Chi Minh complex, an important place of pilgrimage for many Vietnamese, combining the secular and the spiritual. A traffic-free area of parks, monuments, memorials and pagodas, it’s usually crowded with groups of all ages who have come to pay their respects.Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum – built contrary to his desire for a simple cremation – was constructed, between 1973 and 1975, of native materials gathered from all over Vietnam. The roof and peristyle are said to evoke either a traditional communal house or a lotus flower, though to many tourists it looks like a concrete cubical with columns. Photography is permitted outside the building but not inside and visitors must leave their bags at a counter just inside the entrance.Beside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum is a stilt house which is built in the style of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities, and has been preserve just as Uncle Ho left it. Near the stilt house is the Presidential palace, a beautiful restored colonial building constructed in 1906 as the palace of the Governor General of Indochina. It is now used for official receptions and isn’t open to the public.Ho Chi Minh’s museum has to separate sections: the past and the future. You start in the past and move to the future by walking in a clockwise direction downwards through the museum, starting from the right-hand side of the top of the stairs. The modern displays all have messages, such as ‘peace’, ‘happiness’ and ‘freedom’.Hanoi’s famous One Pillar Pagoda was built by the Emperor Ly Thai Tong, who ruled from 1028 to 1054, and built of wood on a single stone pillar. It is designed to resemble a lotus blossom, symbol of purity, rising out of a sea of sorrow.