Your tour guide and car from Paradise Indochina Travel pick you up at your hotels then start discovering Hanoi City. The first place is Ho Chi Minh mausoleum (open only in morning time 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM and close on Monday & Friday weekly). It is the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh, the most iconic and popular leader of Vietnam, known to his people as ‘Uncle Ho’. His body is preserved here in a glass case at the mausoleum (albeit against his wishes). Started in 1973, the construction of the mausoleum was modeled on Lenin's mausoleum in Russia and was first open to the public in 1975. Security is tight and visitors should dress with respect (no shorts, sleeveless shirts and miniskirts) and everyone has to deposit their bags and cameras before getting in. PLEASE NOTE that the mausoleum is closed from June 10 to August 12 yearly for maintenance.

One Pillar Pagoda

Legend claims that The One Pillar Pagoda was built following a dream by the fatherless emperor in which the enlightened being Avalokiteshvara gave him a baby son resting on a lotus flower. Emperor Ly Thai Tong commissioned the pagoda to be created in resemblance of this lotus flower which is also the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment. The Emperor remained in gratitude to the bodhisattva and subsequently to to Quan Am, the Goddess of Mercy following the birth of his son. Inside the temple a richly gilded statue of Quan Am takes centre place at the main altar. Today, the concrete pillar that supports the tiny wooden pagoda is a replacement for the original one which was blown up by the departing French, it remains unclear how much of the wooden temple is the original one. Another point of interest is a bo tree that grows behind the pagoda which legend state is an offshoot of the one under which Buddha became enlightened - the tree was given as a gift from India in 1958.