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08:00 Pick up at your hotel start for City tours: Visit Ho Chi Minh complex, for a close view of Ho Chi Minh’s state in the Mausoleum- the great uncle Ho, President Ho Chi Minh from 1958 to 1969. Then visit Ho Chi Minh’s Museum, where his sacrifice for Viet Nam has made history. Next, the One Pillar Pagoda- a group of structures consisting of a pagoda and a tower built in the middle of a square lake. A short visit to the Temple of Literature give insight on where the first college of Viet Nam and the place dedicating to Confucian.

12:00 Have lunch. After lunch, visit Tran Quoc Pagoda, on the shore of West Lake and the Museum of Ethnology you can see the cultural mosaic of 54 Vietnamese ethnic groups. Lastly, Hoan Kiem Lake which is known as Restored Sword Lake, Ngoc Son Temple and Hanoi Old Quarter.

At the back is a garden of fruit trees, where the luxuriant milk fruit tree donated to Uncle Ho by his southern compatriots in 1954 stands between two lines of Hai Hung orange trees. Other valuable trees belonging to more than 30 species supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Forestry, and several provinces represent the wide variety of trees growing in Vietnam. There are also trees imported from foreign countries, such as Ngan Hoa trees, miniature rose bushes, areca trees from the Caribbean, Buddhist bamboo trees, etc. Dozens of varieties of beautifully hang from the trees which blossom all year round.

Many people know the story of how Uncle Ho came to live in a small stilt-house rather than a grand palace. But it is worth retelling. Ho Chi Minh was never one for large houses and comfortable living. He was just 21 when, in 1911, he set out to travel "the five continents and the four oceans" to seek ways of saving his country. For 30 years he lived a nomadic life, changing addresses constantly. When he came back to Vietnam in 1941, he led the revolution against colonial rule and read the country’s historic Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi on September 2, 1945. Not long afterwards, the French attempted to reassert control of their former dominion, and Ho Chi Minh and his generals were forced into the north-western mountains. During the resistance war of 1946-1954, Uncle Ho reverted to his nomadic ways, for the only means of avoiding detection and capture was to live life constantly on the run. He moved from one hide-out to another several times a month, and only lived in stilt-houses. When the war was won in 1954, the Party, Government and Ho Chi Minh came back to Hanoi. But Uncle Ho eschewed the trappings of authority. A true egalitarian, he chose to live a simple life: he wore brown cotton garments and rubber sandals made from car tyros, and lived in a worker’s cottage out the back of the Presidential Palace. In 1958, Uncle Ho revisited the former resistance base in the north-west and saw some of the stilt-houses where he had spent the war years. When he got back to Hanoi, he said he wanted a similar stilt-house built on the grounds of the Presidential Palace itself. The Party commissioned an architect from the Department for Army Barracks to design the house, but told him to submit his plans to Uncle Ho for comment before work began. The initial design had three rooms, including a toilet. But Uncle Ho wanted the house to remain faithful to the real thing. "The stilt-house must have only one or two rooms, small rooms at that, and definitely no toilet," he said. The architect amended the designs, and the stilt-house that Ho Chi Minh moved into on May 17, 1958, had two rooms of just 10sq.m each. He lived and worked there for the remaining 11 years of his life.

Today, the stilt-house and its furnishings have been preserved must as they were in the 1960s. In the area under the house, Ho Chi Minh would receive visitors and meet members of the Political Bureau. In the centre of the floor is a long table, with wooden and bamboo chairs around it. Uncle Ho used a rattan armchair in the left-hand corner to sit and read, or rest. In another corner are three telephones that he used to talk to the Political Bureau, the Operations Department and others, and a steel helmet that he wore during the years of the American War.

In the right-hand corner, he kept an aquarium with goldfish to amuse visiting children. The two rooms of the stilt-house are sparsely furnished. One, the bedroom, contains only a bed and wardrobe. The other, the study, houses a table, chair and bookshelf. His appliances were just the bare necessities: a palm-leaf fan, a brown paper fan, a bamboo mosquito catcher, a little thermos-flask, a bottle of water, a radio-set given by Vietnamese nationals in Thailand, and a small electric fan – a gift from the Communist Party of Japan. A little brass bell used to hang on the door. In the stilt-house, Uncle Ho received top cadres, children and his close friends. He spent most of his time writing letters, revolutionary articles encouraging "good people, good deeds," and documents of great historical value on important political tasks such as his 1966 Call against US Imperialism, for National Salvation. Plants and trees were grown in the area around the stilt-house, as Uncle Ho was a poet with a great love for nature and pet animals. The garden is bordered with hibiscus, and the gate of climbing plants is typical of rural Vietnam. The front garden is decorated with little bushes of fragrant jasmines and eglantines, while at the rear is a stand of star-fruit trees from the country’s south. Spring sends the garden into a colourful riot of mangoes, white blossoms, and orchids. Uncle Ho regularly practiced martial arts and taichi with the guards in the garden, also the place where he once conducted people singing the famous song Unity, like a real orchestra conductor. In front of the stilt-house is his fish-pond, teeming with fish that he fed with great care. He only had to clap his hands and they came in shoals for food. The house clearly reveals his humility, his erudition and his love of simplicity and nature.

As late Prime Minister Pham Van Dong once wrote: "It is not merely a landscape, but a way of life; it speaks of a priceless joy that the current civilisation seems deprived of, with its polluted mega-cities and cluttered high-rise apartments.

Today, visitors flock to the stilt-house to remember what kind of a man Uncle Ho was, and to celebrate his memory - a man of sophisticated intellect yet simple pleasures, of revolutionary ideas yet of peaceful disposition.

Quoc Tu Giam, or Vietnam's first university, was built in 1076. Throughout its hundreds of years of activity in the feudal, thousands of Vietnamese scholars graduated from this university.

In 1483 Quoc Tu Giam was changed into Thai Hoc Vien (Higher Educational Institute). After decades of war and natural disasters, the former construction was completely destroyed. In preparation for the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long (present day Hanoi) another construction has been built following the model of the previous Thai Hoc Vien on the same ground. The work includes the front hall, the back sanctuary, lean-tos on the left and on the right, the courtyard, and subsidiary structures.

This site preserves historical vestiges of a 1,000-year-old civilization such as statues of Confucius and his disciples (Yan Hui, Zengshen, Zisi, Mencius), and ancient constructions such as Khue Van Cac (Pavilion of the Constellation of Literature) and the Worshipping Hall.

After ten years of hard fighting (1418 - 1428), the Lam Son insurrectionists led by Le Loi swept the foreign invaders out of the country of Dai Viet (Great Viet), ending the Ming's 20-year domination over the Viet people. Le Loi became a national hero, proclaiming himself kings, called Le Thai To and establishing his capital in Thang Long.

On a beautiful afternoon, the king and his entourage took a dragon-shaped boat for sight-seeing on Luc Thuy (Green Water) Lake, which was located in the centre of Thang Long Capital (present-day Hanoi). As the boat was gliding on the lake, suddenly there was a great wave and on top of the wave, the Golden Tortoise Genie appeared, telling the king: "Your Majesty, the great work is completed. Would you please return the sacred sword to the King of the Sea?".

The precious sword was formerly lent to Le Loi by the King of the Sea and was always beside him throughout his battles and helped him win over the Ming invaders. At the time the Tortoise Genie spoke, the sword hung at the King's waist. It then moved out of the scabbard and flew towards the Genie. The Genie kept the sword in his mouth and dived under the water and bright lightning flashed up to the sky. Since then, Luc Thuy Lake has been called the Restored Sword Lake or the Sword Lake for short.

The Sword Lake is not only a historical site but also a beauty-spot of the capital. When visiting Hanoi, Ludemis, a Greek poet, exclaimed: The Sword Lake - An emerald jewel set in the heart of the city, With the Red River as a silk ribbon around.

It is said that when visiting Hanoi, if the visitor does not see the Sword Lake, then they would not have actually been in Hanoi. The lake is an endless topic and inspiration for painters, poets, writers, music composers, etc, and innumerable works about the lake have been produced.

Once, a famous Japanese painter said to the late-painter Van Giao that he had painted dozens of pictures of Mount Fuji - the second to none beauty spot of Japan. Then painter Van Giao replied by saying that he had painted hundreds of pictures of the Sword Lake.

The Sword Lake is really an emerald jewel of Hanoi. For generations, the Vietnamese believed that deep in the green water of the Sword Lake, there is a sacred sword of their ancestors, which is carefully safeguarded by the golden tortoise. When the weather changes, the tortoise emerges on the water surface to take a sun bath, seeming to prove his existence and remind the young generation of their national history of defending their country from foreign invaders.

It is said that, the pagoda was built under the reign of King Ly Nam De (544-548) under its original name of Khai Quoc (National Founder). It was originally built on the bank of the West Lake and the Red River. In the time of King Le Kinh Tong (1600-1618), the pagoda was removed to the Kim Ngu (Golden Fish) Islet due to the river bank crumbling and was renamed Tran Quoc (National Defence).

Behind the worshipping shrine is the Buddhist trinity followed by corridors, ten shrines and the belfry. In the pagoda, there are many valuable statues, such as the red lacstatue trimmed with gold of Sakyamouni Buddha's Parinirvana and many ancient stelae with the old- one made in 1639 by Doctoral Law - Nguyen Xuan Chinh recording the pagoda's history.

In 1959, on his visit to Vietnam, Indian Prime Minister Razendia Prasat offered the Pagoda a bodhi tree as a gift. The plant was grafted from the holy Bodhi tree where Sakyamuni sat in zen (meditation) position 25 centuries ago. Now the Bodhi tree is green and luxuriant, shading part of the pagoda's yard.

As a religious relic among spectacle scenery, Tran Quoc Pagoda is a favourite stop-over of many foreign visitors and pilgrims.