According to the initial design, the house-on-stilts had three rooms including a toilet. Uncle Ho had a look at it and commented in a serious manner: "The house-on-stilts must have only one or two rooms, small rooms at that, and definitely without a toilet." And so, on May 17, 1958, a house-on-stilts with two rooms, 10m² each, was unveiled. For his life and work, the historic house became his working place for 11 years, till the end of his life.

Uncle Ho used the ground floor as a sitting-room to receive visitors and to meet with the Political Bureau members. A long table is set in the middle with wooden and bamboo chairs around. A rattan arm-chair is set in the left-hand corner, in which he used to sit and read or take a rest. In another corner are found 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 US war of destruction against the North. In a right-hand corner, he placed an aquarium with gold fish that could amuse and entertain the children, when they visited him.

The first floor was divided in two for his necessaries, in one a bed and a wardrobe in the other a table and a chair, and a bookshelf. His appliances included a palm-leaf fan, a brown paper fan, a bamboo mosquito catcher, a little thermos-flash, 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 was hung on the door.

Uncle Ho's the House-on-stilts. Photo: VNP

Numerous people visit the relic. Photo: VNP

Uncle Ho's the House-on-stilts. Photo: VNP

In this house-on-stilts, Uncle Ho received responsible cadres, children and his intimate friends, such as Loseby, the lawyer, his wife and daughter, who successfully defended him in Hong Kong and helped him secretly escape from the clutches of the enemy. He spent most of his time writing revolutionary articles, encouraging "good people, good deeds", writing documents of great historical value on important political tasks such as his "Call against US imperialism, for national salvation" in 1966, his letters and his Testament from 1965 to 1969.

Visitors at the relic. Photo: Tran Hieu/VNP

Plants and trees were grown in the area around the house-on-stilts, as Uncle Ho was a poet, with a great love for nature and pet animals. Around the garden you can find a hedge of hibiscus, with a gate made of climbing plants, very popular in rural Vietnam. The little front garden is decorated with little bushes of fragrant jasmines and eglantines. The star apple from the fellow-countrymen in the South was planted at the back of the house, always with a verdant green expressing his attachment to the South. Along the two sides of the pebble path leading to the house-on-stilts are two lines of mangos, with two bauhinias at the two ends, giving white blossoms when Spring comes. Dozens of varieties of orchids in turn bloom during the four seasons, on the barks of the trees at the edge of the fish-pond.

Uncle Ho regularly practiced martial art and did physical exercises with the guards, right in his garden, where he had once conducted people singing the famous song "Unity", like a real orchestra conductor.

Visitors pose at the Uncle Ho's fish pond. Photo: Tran Hieu/VNP

In front of the house-on-stilts, "Uncle Ho's fish-pond" is teeming with fish that he fed with great care. He was so familiar to them that he only had to clap his hands and they came in shoals for the food. As former Prime Minister Pham Van Dong put it in his work "Fundamental perception of Ho Chi Minh's thoughts", "the house-on-stilts, that has for many years impressed visitors at home and abroad, was the lodging home where Ho Chi Minh lived with nature. This is not merely a landscape, but a way of life as well, that brings man priceless joy, that the current civilization seems deprived of, with mega-cities and well-furnished high-rises, sometimes with unnecessary appliances or furniture, polluted environment and spoiled nature, quite detrimental to man himself."

Today, the house-on-stilts constitutes an integral component of the architectural complex in memory of Uncle Ho, including the House-on-Stilts, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum. It is not only a historic-cultural relic of Vietnam, but it is of international significance, because Ho Chi Minh was not only the father and mentor of the Vietnamese nation but a Man of Culture of the world as well./.