A bit about Hanoi: Hanoi, population 3 million (2004), is located on the right bank of the Red River and is the current capital of Vietnam. Between 1954 & 1976, it was the capital of North Vietnam, and long before that, it served as the capital of the entity now known as Vietnam from at least the 11th century until 1802 (with a few brief interruptions).
If you have an image of Hanoi as a stern, austere bastion of Vietnamese communism, ravaged by war & closed to the world, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Hanoi is one of the most charming cities in SE Asia.. This ancient city of lakes with Chinese architecture, majestic French colonial buildings & tree-lined lanes, extends a reserved but genuine friendliness - the essence of the North Vietnamese. Less cosmopolitan than Saigon, it has fewer skyscrapers & less traffic clogs, and is kinder & gentler than its southern rival.
With the major exception of “Hoa Lo” prison, sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American prisoners of war who were held there during the Vietnam War, most physical evidence of the war has disappeared from the streets of Hanoi and memories of the war are fading. (More than half of Vietnam's 70 million people were born after the war ended on April 30, 1975. The Vietnamese now celebrate "Reunification" on that date each year.)
Most of the sights are concentrated in Hoan Kiem (old quarter) and Ba Dinh districts, the area covered by this journal. I will tell you more about the old quarter in upcoming journals.
For more information about Hanoi, check these excellent sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoi
http://www.vietscape.com/travel/hanoi/
"About Ho Chi Minh": Ho Chi Minh, affectionately called “Uncle Ho”, is the father of Vietnam, a humble little man who fought the French, the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Americans for his country's independence. He was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman who later became Prime Minister (1946-1955) and President (1955-1969) of North Vietnam. He is most famous for being the founder of the Viet-Minh independence movement in 1941 and for establishing communist control in part of Vietnam in the 1960s.
He was a worldwide wanderer, scholar, revolutionary, founding member of both the French and Indochina Communist parties, ardent nationalist, and implacable foe of imperialism. There was even a time, during the second World War, when his troops rescued downed American flyers in the mountains of northern Vietnam.
Despite land reform excesses early in his rule of "North" Vietnam, HCM was a humanitarian compared with such Communist monsters as Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, and even Lenin. He lived simply, unlike Mao and Stalin, and, also unlike them, conducted no massive purges.
In Hanoi, portraits and statues of HCM gaze at you from roadside billboards and public squares, from many walls in official & civilian buildings, and from each denomination of the country's pastel-colored currency,
For more information, check this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh
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