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in historic Ba Dinh Square where President Ho Chi Minh (HCM), on September 2nd, 1945, publicly proclaimed the independence of Vietnam to a crowd of over half a million, and to the world at large. The Square is in a park-dotted district of old graceful villas that today house many of the foreign consulates & embassies. The Mausoleum is adjacent to a large park that includes the HCM Museum, the stilted house where HCM lived the final 15 years of his life, the Presidential Palace, and the famous One-Pillar Pagoda. Although HCM was a humble man & had wished to be cremated, his body was embalmed by a team of Soviet experts after his death on September 3, 1969, & was put on display in this mausoleum. Seeing the preserved body of “Uncle Ho”, the man who reunited Vietnam, dressed in a plain tunic and sandals in a glass-framed sarcophagus is a somber experience for locals in this spiritual center of Vietnamese independence, but for foreigners as well.
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Asia
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