Here I am in Hanoi, standing in front of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. Hanoi was grey, crowded, and the air was chokingly dirty on the day we visited (we spent most of our time up north in a lovely hill area called Thanh Hoa, visiting farmers and sharing one memorable meal with local Communist officials, who toasted us endlessly with tiny cups of coconut wine). The ride into Hanoi from the airport was fascinating — the entire route under construction, cars and buses sharing lanes with mobs of cyclists, and all the revolutionary slogans that once called defiance to the US from billboards along the way now replaced with big ads for banks, construction firms, and electronics.

Then to the tomb. There were more mobs, of Vietnamese tourists this time, visiting their version of Washington, DC, and paying tribute to the Father of their Country. Ho is revered in the Communist manner: His body carefully preserved and put on display every day. At night it’s lowered into a temperature-controlled crypt below the tomb.

Yes, fellow children of the Sixties, Uncle Ho is now a tourist attraction.

And the Vietnamese kept blaming the air pollution on the Chinese.