I VISITED Vietnam for the first time, a few years ago. With the limited time to spare, I chose to spend a couple of days in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I was so surprised that the whole city was literally frozen in time. The streets were bursting with chaos from zipping vespas but were also lined with rows of quaint French villas.
I arrived around noon and immediately roamed the streets to get some lunch after checking in at a local hotel in the French Quarter. I received a chilly welcome when I stumbled at this deserted, wall-to-floor marbled mall in the middle of the city, the Trang Tien Plaza. This humongous mall housed internationally-known designer stores but had literally less than 10 people roaming inside. On the top floor was the food court, with only one burger joint. I thought it was weird eating a Vietnamese burger alone in a deserted food court, but I did not care because I was famished.
After lunch I went to a nearby lake, the Hoan Kiem Lake. I was told that the lake is the heart and soul of Hanoi, serving as a focal point of public life and a slice of solitude amid the chaos of the city. It seemed everyone in Hanoi was there, meditating, exercising, smoking, and chatting. It was peaceful to just sit and people-watch and let the cool breeze from the lake swift by. I went back to the hotel and booked a local day tour to further explore Hanoi.
A typhoon swept overnight, so the streets were lined with fallen trees and debris. With pouring rain, the tour soldiered on. We went around the Old Quarter appreciating the wonderfully preserved architecture, then to the One Pillar Pagoda where it explained the story of how Hanoi was founded. The tour culminated in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum at the center of the Ba Ding Square, where the Vietnamese Revolutionary leader was laid to rest. Detailed instructions were given to us before lining up to see their leader. The mausoleum was well guarded and extravagantly decorated. No pictures were allowed, and tourists were required to follow a roped-in path going into the mausoleum. Once inside, the body of the leader was well preserved in a glass coffin, well-staged with strategically placed, muted, colored lights. The whole time I was thinking, whether a similar mausoleum will be erected in the Philippines for former President Ferdinand Marcos for tourists to visit.
After the tour, I was blown away by how conformity and full obedience can be secured from the masses by one person. Unfortunately, any democratic state contains an ever-shifting balance between democratic and dictatorial tendencies. We experienced this in the Philippines, first hand. We sort of tried to break free from this social suppression-