(Nha Bac Ho). After 1954 Ho Chi Minh had the run of the Presidential Palace, but the ostentation was too much for the ascetic president, who openly shunned luxury and preferred the humble former home of the palace's electrician, where he lived for four years. Then, the story goes, in 1958 Ho Chi Minh moved to this simple but tasteful wooden house on stilts, which served as his living quarters and work space until his death in 1969. An elegant but spare study -- some books, his small typewriter, a few newspapers, and an electric fan presented to him by a group of Japanese Communists are visible -- adjoins his equally spare bedroom. Downstairs he received his guests: foreign dignitaries, Politburo members, army cadres, and schoolchildren. Surrounding the house are well-tended gardens with flame trees, willows, mango trees, and aromatic frangipani. Cyprus trees thrive on the edge of the pond, which Ho had stocked with carp. A crisp clap of the hands apparently still brings the fish to the surface.
Regardless of Ho Chi Minh's faith in the accuracy of the city's antiaircraft gunners, some doubt must be thrown on the claim that Ho Chi Minh spent so much time in this open-air sanctum, with only the trees, his wooden house, and a trusty old war helmet as protection. American bombers targeted Hanoi during the war, and they surely would have emptied their loads on Ba Dinh District had they known their archenemy was feeding fish and conferring with his generals in the unprotected confines of his stilt house. Indeed, Ho's Politburo ordered the construction of a nearby bomb shelter, later dubbed House No. 67. Legend holds that Uncle Ho refused to use the shelter as a home, preferring to confer with the Politburo in this fortified bunker but to sleep in his stilt house. Before visiting Ho's residence, wait for the rest of the group that accompanied you through the mausoleum to go on ahead; it's much more enjoyable to walk through the jasmine-scented compound unhurried and without the inevitable chatter of other tourists. You'll exit this area via a pebbled pathway to the south of the mausoleum. As if they were themselves sights on the tour, older Vietnamese intellectuals wearing bifocals and striped cotton pajamas sit on park benches and read the Communist Party mouthpiece, Nhan Dan (The People), or sip green tea and smoke cigarettes. OPEN: Daily 7:30-11 and 1:30-4.
