HANOI, Vietnam.- Excellent meetings with the highest Vietnamese authorities. They ratify the will to raise the level of our economic relations at the level of political relations, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez wrote this Friday in his Twitter account.

In that social network, the Cuban President highlighted that we have much to learn from our Vietnamese brothers, winners of wars, blockades and also the inheritance of underdevelopment, with exemplary work, creativity and discipline.

On the first day of his official and friendly visit to Vietnam, Diaz-Canel held official conversations with his Vietnamese pair, Nguyen Phu Trong.

The Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam imposed on the Cuban President the Order of Ho Chi Minh, the second most important that the Asian Nation bestows, in recognition of contributions to friendship between the two countries.

Cuba and Vietnam Strengthen Relations

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the head of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, agreed this Friday that parliamentary ties are essential to knot the close friendship between the two countries.

Ties at the State, Government, and Communist parties are rounded up and strengthened with those that sustain the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power and the National Assembly of Vietnam, Kim Ngan said.

Diaz-Canel thanked her for his contributions to friendship between the two nations during her several years as president of the Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Association, and acknowledged her contributions in the same sense from her current position.

Also, the Cuban President passed on her a cordial greeting from Army General Raul Castro Ruz, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, History Perpetuated in Granite

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is one of the most visited places of Hanoi and an intrinsic part of Vietnam´s history, because there lie the remains of the architect of the independence and the reunification of the country.

The mausoleum and the other facilities associated with Uncle Ho are visited by all the foreign delegations of first level visiting Hanoi, but for some reason -or for many reasons- Vietnamese and Cubans are tempted that those coming from the island do so with a very particular fervor.

Perhaps it is because the two great figures of the contemporary history of the two countries, Ho Chi Minh himself and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, professed a close friendship even though they never met each other.

Or perhaps it is due for so much shared history, even though Cuba and Vietnam are more than 15 700 km away, in the antipodes of the planet.