Ho Chi Mama Misses Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum on a Hot Day

Left with one final day in Ha Noi, we decided to cram in a visit to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and two pagodas (just to drive the kids crazy).  Wouldn't you know that Ho Chi Minh's corpse does not receive visitors on Fridays and Mondays.  Apparently he needs to rest up from all of the tourist traffic.  So, on a balmy day in Ha Noi, our children were dressed in their "respectable" long pants for no reason, and they were not pleased.  Sweaty, tired and whiny...about par for the course.

Fortunately the One Pillared Pagoda, right next door to Ho Chi Minh, does not close on Mondays, so we scooted over there where I gave thanks for the signs requesting long pants.  Brianna looked around for a minute and proclaimed that the whole thing reminded her of Disney World.  I swear the Earth quaked and Ho Chi Minh rolled in his mausoleum when he heard his hallowed grounds being compared to an icon of American Capitalism.

We finished off our visit to Ha Noi with a visit to the Temple of Literature and one last tasty meal before heading to the airport. 

Our return to Hoi An was sad.  We had left five days earlier in a splash of energy and organization.  We had stripped all of our beds and washed all of our sheets, comforters and towels - rationalizing that everything would have five days to air dry.  Apparently it dumped rain for five days here.  We returned to a tropical rainforest - inside our house.  The walls are literally dripping with water.  It has just seeped through the concrete.  There are two colors of mold growing in our bedroom (green and black).  Needless to say, none of the laundry dried.  So, we had a pleasant night sleeping on damp matresses with no sheets or covers in moldy rooms.  This morning I had a nice hot shower and patted myself dry with a wet, musty towel.  It rained all day. It's looking like another night on damp mattresses.  We've got the fans blowing all day on the laundry, but even the dry clothes hanging in the closet are feeling damp and are threatening to mold on the hangers.  Perhaps the rainy season has finally arrived.  I'm not a fan.

Smiling Water Puppets
(I'll take smiles wherever I can get them.)