My Day in Ho Chi Minh

My day didn't start off to well, as usual when I sleep without a clock, I woke up about 20 minutes (i'm guessing) after I went to bed, and thought it was morning... More over, I was so exhausted and messed up I like.. showered twice by accident and still wasn't reallly concious. Packed, got out of my room, came downstaires and discovered it was 4 am (I went to my room at 2:30 and watched tv for 1/2 an hour, hence the 20 minute estimate above)

Since my hair was still wet though, I did what any of you would have done and decided to play it safe and walk around downtown Ho Chi Minh alone at 4 am. There's a night life here, the bar we were at earlier was still going, and there was another club that looked really 'happening'. The only thing I couldn't stand was the guy that followed me, repeatidly offering me drugs and underage hoe's. He just wouldn't take a hint. He followed me from the instant I left my hostle, until I went back.

Anyways, so I went back to bed, got woken up in an hour, fell asleep again, and then was woken up again 30 seconds before our bus was going to leave. Now that's timing :)

Our bus was to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I had no idea what these were. Turns out they were tunnels the Viet Kong used to live in, and fight from during the French and American wars. These tunnels are crazy, and crazy well designed. They're too small for 'big-ass'ed american's, regular air holes for air, these holes are covered with american garbage to hide from German Sheppards (plenty of german sheppard traps too... they're really.. what's the word... spikey), a chimney system that really reduces noticiple smoke, caged cobras (with cowboy hats and guns in holsters, I'm sure) to be released when abondoning the caves, escape routes into the river, hidden access points, strong clay (especially after the surface is Napalmed, it heats up the clay and makes it harder), etc.

I guess 25 years of war really learns ya to guerilla fight it well. They also had a lot of traps on display, they're all so.. well, brutal. Ridicuously brutal. So brutal infact that it really re-evens out my biases. I say re-evens, because I was in a museum yesterday that showed all the attrocities the American's performed, so after seeing what the Viet Kong did, it's like "That's not right, and it's clearly inhuman... But I understand. Infact, had I falling into one of those roller spike traps, I'd have thrown the culprit out of a Helicoptor too..."

Anyways, back to the tunnels. We got to crawl around in some of them too, and the gun fire in the background (I'll get to that in a sec) made it all more realistic. We started off as 15 I think, and by the end (there were two exists along the way) there were only four of us left. Some parts of the tunnel were so narrow you had to crawl and slither. The rest you just had to pretend you were 3 feet tall. And frig they're hot when you load them up with people. Rumour is that next year they'll be air conditioned.. I hope that was a joke, it'd be so wasteful.

Now, I know some of you have come to think of me as clusterphobic, and thats true. I really felt closterphoobic in that first snipering hole I got in (pictures to come...) But I was fine in the tunnel actually. Infact, the only time I got closterphoic in the tunnel is when the fat chick infront of me stopped, and the portuguise (ya.. one of them) stopped behind me, and they just waited for.. well, nothing, but they waited just the same. That's when you feel trapped. At least for the last 60 meters I was behind the hot viking chick (Norwegian, whatever. :) )

After all this came the shooting range. Holy shit M-16s are loud. I was fireing an M16, the communist laughed at me when I wanted ear protectors. After fireing, I was glad I had them.

Our tour guild was a bit different... He was a vet. Philipeno, but born in Vietnam, calls it his homeland, he was an officer in the American Navy, which translated to 4 years of prison camp when he decided to stay in Vietnam when the Americans pulled out. He's not fond of the commuinsts, and even less of being a tour guide (aAs he kept pointing out.) He also kept preaching that if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, and from his personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you. Etc. Why? Ugly girls can cook. The example he kept on citing was how his Vietnamise/Canadian wife was really ugly, but she could cook some mean rice. He also kept (to the point of a complaint) calling her (and all westerners) fat, which I guess goes along with the cooking.

Oh, we also stopped by a government run handicap work camp/factory. These different, or handi-capable, people make all these amazing things out of egg and sea shells, and.. like, it's crazy, you'll see what I mean when I put the pictures, you've all surely seen artifacts of these sorts. There were some wooden cabinents, worth 1600$ USD, and like, I swear, in North America, they'd be 20k$ MINIMUM. The bus was leaving so I didn't get any time to pick things up, maybe when I come back to the city.

Anyways, we got back, and the afternoon finished off with some weird KFC and some amazing New Zealand ice cream sundays on the rocks (you know, with those little umbreallas)

Next on the list? At 8 I have a 12 hour bus ride to Nahtram, heard it's full of beaches and stuff.. So, here's for another few days with little to no sleep. (sooooo tired..)