Took the girls to see a dead body today. Hmm. Perhaps I can write something better than that.
We all went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to escape the hustle and bustle of Hanoi today. He’s still revered within Vietnam, despite many of the Vietnamese living abroad hate him with such a passion (the Lonely Planet actually warns you about wearing your souvenir Ho Chi Minh T-shirt at home!). So they queue from early in the morning to be allowed to shuffle past his preserved (the thesaurus just offered me ‘pickled’) body, reposing inside a glass case, with an honour guard standing to attention all around him. It took some explaining to the girls, as it was their first real, live dead body (if you know what I mean), but after the horror stories and pictures of Cambodia, they didn’t seem at all surprised by it. There are no photos allowed inside (obviously), so the closest your going to get is this photo.