To Minsk or not to Minsk

After much deliberation and much consultation with local "experts," Mike Cho and I have decided to rent Minsks and drive to Ha Long Bay.

Minsks are Russian-made enduro-like motorcycles that are apparently still in production. Several places near our Hotel rent these bikes and they usually repair them too. This tends to engender a certain skepticism since you are renting motorcycles that have most likely just been repaired. We asked one guy if he had two bikes available and he looked around and pointed to one that was sitting outside and one that was completely disassembled in front of him and confidently replied yes.

Another guy was very helpful with calming our anxiety concerning the nation's law enforcement corps. We asked if we were going to get pulled over and he said, no. We asked if we needed insurance (his website said that driving with insurance was a big no-no) and he said, no, don't worry about it. What about registration? He'll hold on to that for us along with our passports. So, no insurance, no registration, no passport and no valid driver's license, and that's cool? Yeah. But he assured us that we wouldn't have any problems because he would give us a toolkit and a couple of extra cables in case we had any mechanical failures.

We got about 10 feet from the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh today. He looked great. He's kept in a monumental building that looks like a cross between the Lincoln Memorial and a Soviet-era nuclear bunker. As we slowly neared the building in the 500 person strong line, we were passed by a group of about 50 6-year olds who somehow pegged Mike and me as foreigners and yelled "hello!" and "what's your name?" and "OK!" as they passed. The line moved steadily and after having some recent encounters at the DMV, I'd venture to say that these communists may have to stand in line a lot, but they've got that shit dialed. The imposing guards used gestures to inform us that hats were to be removed from heads and hands from pockets. No talking either. Not that we'd even consider it. You walk up some gentle stairs to the second floor and as you ascend it gets gently darker and cooler. Then you make a final U turn into the viewing chamber to see Uncle Ho. It's downright chilly in there. And everyone is dead-silent (sorry) and fixated on this body which seems to float serenely inside it's Edward-Scissorhands-meets-Circque-de-Soleil aquarium. The really beautiful thing about this whole experience, especially after seeing this man's face plastered over EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE is that you realize along with everyone else that he is/was a man - of human scale. Not a giant and not a myth. And that makes his greatness seem that much more great because you realize that he was a human being who did big things. The Licoln Memorial has a huge statue of Licoln looking out like a demi-god. This is a lot different than that.

We then went onto the Ho Chi Minh museum and I can't really accurately describe how weird it was. They didn't have artifacts per se. They had strange, acid-trip diaramas that were meant to depict "The People's Struggle Against Facism and the Money Hungry Capitalists that Support It." The diorama would be ripped-off Guernica paintings, a Ford Edsel coming out of the wall, signitures of famous Spanish artists scrawled across the wall, and letters written from one Vietnamese liberators to French communist newspapers. Super weird.

Tonight we hook up with Sok Meng. More on that later.