[general_devel] Vietnam honours Russian embalmers of Ho Chi Minh

[Vern Weitzel]

I am not sure where this posting should go. However, I can attest to the sense
of awe one has on entering the chamber where Ho Chi Minh rests. He wanted to
be cremated. No luck.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jkSk60HjRXKDGqfMdqMRM_M1TLnQ

Vietnam honours Russian embalmers of Ho Chi Minh
2 days ago

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has presented awards to Russian scientists who have helped 
preserve the body of founding president Ho Chi Minh for the past 40 years, the 
foreign ministry said.

Valery Bykov and Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky each received Vietnam's Independence 
Order, third class, at a ceremony in Moscow on Wednesday, the Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs said.

It said they were honoured for "great services for the past 40 years to the 
embalmment and preservation of the body of President Ho Chi Minh as well as the 
construction of mausoleum for him."

The Independence Order is the country's third-highest national honour.

Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong, commander of the Mausoleum Protection Command, said 
the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, had helped train a team of Vietnamese 
scientists and bio-medical experts working on the preservation of Ho's body, the 
foreign ministry said.

White-jacketed guards protect the grey stone mausoleum, surrounded by parkland 
in central Hanoi's embassy district, where tourists line up to see the body of 
Vietnam's revolutionary leader who died in September 1969.

In 2007 on the 90th anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, Nguyen Thi 
Minh Hien, deputy secretary of the Vietnam-Russia Friendship Association, said 
that each year Russian experts "come to Hanoi to maintain (his) embalmed corpse."