A soldier stands guard outside the mausoleum of the late Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi on May 29, 2009.
The Vietnamese revolutionary requested that officials cremate his remains: he thought the practice was more hygienic than burial, and wanted his comrades to use their land to grow crops rather than storing bodies. They ignored him. More than 40 years after his death, Uncle Ho’s body is displayed inside a granite mausoleum meant to resemble a lotus flower (though tourists tend to describe it as a concrete block). The mausoleum closes for two months each year when caretakers escort the corpse to Moscow for its annual touch-up.