The Adventure Of Two Lifetimes: Saigon and Some Advice About Chickens

Sorry, this is a long post. I wrote it on the bus on my IPod so no pictures yet...

Have you ever kicked a chicken? Not like, "screw you Chicken, I will kick you," but more like, "OMG I just kicked a chicken!" well, if you haven't kicked a chicken I think you should. Not on purpose, but just because you were walking down the street looking for camera stores and there happened to be a chicken that also wasn't paying attention and then BAM! Kicked the damned chicken.
So then kicking chickens must be lucky because the very next store you walk into is the only one in Ho Chi Minh that has the camera you're looking for and it is the same color as the one that was stolen and $90 cheaper than the first time you bought it. Wow! Who knew kicking chickens was so lucky?

So anyway, we spent most of yesterday and the day before walking around the city exploring and stuff. We went to the zoo, which was pretty good, and saw elephants, crocs, and both white lions and white tigers.

Then we went to the war museum. If I may, for a moment, say that I have never met an American that "agreed" with the Vietnam war and I have been repeatedly taught from history and ethics professors that it was an unjust and largely immoral war among wars. Going into the museum armed with that knowledge and not much else left me unprepared for a lot of the information. I couldn't evaluate what was fact or propaganda. For example: there were some good exhibits about the torture techniques of the South Vietnamese army under the supervision of US administrators. I don't doubt that some CIA dudes encouraged this, but the degree to which it was done according to the exhibit seems beyond expectations. Make no mistake that there was a lot of very obvious misinformation. The details, though, were very muddled. There were some great photos and interesting stories of the journalists from both sides and neutral groups who covered the war. There were a lot of pictures and biographies of those affected by agent orange. That part was pretty awful.

I'll let that settle for a moment.
Okay, ready?

So we've been eating lots of great street food since we got to vietnam. This is the land of pho, a noodle soup served with beef (pho bo) or pork (pho something). We also ate delicious little shrimp spring rolls. The food has gotten so much cheaper too! Everything is less than $2 and comes in generous portions. Compare that to Cambodia where most places were $3-$5 for anything. Oh, and the coffee! I didn't even have to kick a chicken to find the best coffee (except Luang Prabang's). I might buy one of the little brewing cups to use in the future.
Anyway, I think we walked into more than 20 different shops looking for the camera model I wanted. We tried very hard t find shops, and saw lots of signs that claimed they had Olympus cameras. But they were all lying! Most had only one model. Not the one I wanted. But then I kicked that chicken and everything worked out.
So now we're headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels about 70km outside of town with two cameras and a tour guide who's singing Lionel Richie songs acchapella.

The tunnels were constructed by gorilla fighters opposing the Americans. Apparently they were big supporters of the Viet Cong in terms of food because the U.S. spent a lot of time dropping bombs on their rice fields. In response to constant bombing and village raids the people dug complex (but woefully low-ceilinged) tunnel systems that stretched over 200km.

Leighton decided to try the secret hiding place. Guerrillas hid in these when an American was around.

Leighton and I inside the tunnels. I ditched out after about 20m, he made it the whole 100m underground!

They had little traps set up all around and inside the tunnels. When the Americans tried to flood them out they survived in special pockets that were a level above the main tunnels. When they used dogs to sniff out entrances the gorillas put chili-soaked rags around air vents to scare the dogs away. These people were brilliant in the techniques at evasion and, according to the propaganda video we had to watch before going in, equally brilliant at killing Americans. Many of them won the Killer of Americans Award or the American Killer Hero Award. Congratulations! We had takes, jets, and machine guns. You had sharpened sticks and leftover bombs we dropped on you that didn't explode. And the winner is...

The "tiger trap" was formerly used to protect villages from being eaten by large, striped cats... then they were used to protect villages from large, gun toting Americans. Ouch!

On the way to the tunnels we stopped at a small production facility that made handicrafts. The people who worked here were all handicapped, most of them by left-over bombs or as the result of birth-defects from Angent Orange. It was sad that such a place had to exist, but inspiring that it did. These people all had jobs. They were artists. The things they made stunned us. If we had more money and then even more money to ship it home, we would have bought heaps of loot here.
They used polished and varnished wood, egg shells, mother of pearl, and paint to create incredible furniture, sculptures, utensils, wall-hangings, etc. Really great place doing really great work. Congratulations!