We just recently got home from a two week vacation in Vietnam. The thing that I found most interesting is the adoration that the people of Vietnam have for their leader Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the North Vietnamese communist revolution that fought against the south, and after his death was able to unite all of Vietnam under communism. The people of Vietnam, especially in the north, speak of him with such love that you'd think that he was given special leadership at birth and never waivered from one goal of unifying their homeland.
The stories of Ho Chi Minh began to sound like tall tales. He never had a child and some say never gave into the tempation of sex, he lived the life of a commoner working odd jobs all over the world learning every step of the way, he scaled mountains in his old age and at the end of his life spent it in solitude feeding children with the wild fruits that grew around his home. This all happened when his country was in the middle of war.
To the people of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh was a hero and the ideal communist man. Whether or not Ho Chi Minh really did live exactly as the people of Vietnam believed is unimportant, they needed the idea of him after a thousand years of being controlled. It made me think of the flaws we overlook or care to never mention about our national and religious heroes.
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