well kids, after 3 airplanes, 29 hours of travel, a mad dash through the seoul, korea airport to make our flight, and cab driver that didn't know where our hotel was, we finally made it to vietnam and are all settled in. we spent the first two days (sat and sun) sight seeing and getting a feel for the vietnamese lifestyle and culture and have spent the rest of the time here working at the school (more on that a bit later).
our first day was a tour of ho chi mihn city.
first thing to mention- the traffic. from what we can tell, the only law governing movement of vehicles is "he who honks loudest has the right of way". i think we all expected to see deadly crashes left and right (we actually did see one fatality), yet somehow traffic flowed at a reasonable pace in all directions... simultaneously. lucky for us, we were in a van which gave us a clear advantage over the thousands of two-wheeled competitors. oh my goodness- bicycles, mopeds, and motorcycles were everywhere. like cockroaches. they swarmed and scattered through the streets and allyways. and, like the determined insect to which i compare them, they can carry a load exponentially greater than their own mass. i saw entire families piled on to one tiny moped (babies in arms), stacks of big boxes, large glass window panes, 100 lb bags of grains and who knows what else, and even a small refrigerator. you name it, we saw it on the back of a bike that day.
stops on the tour included the reunification palace (formerly the south vietnamese vietnamese palace), the war remnants museum (very sad place), a pottery factory, a taoist temple, a roman catholic cathedral, and a massive wholesale market. during one part of our tour, we rode rick-shaws (?) - which are a bicycle with a seat in the front- through the crazy, never ending street markets. i entrusted a total stranger with life and survived to tell my adrenaline-charged tale of a hundred near misses and only some minor collisions with other rick-shaws.
we got out and walked the massive wholesale market. i have never seen so many people and so much stuff crammed so closely together. the walkways were single file and i learned that pushing is not rude, it's expected. they had all sorts of dehydrated fish, meats, herbs, and vegetables. i suddenly felt homesick for FDA regulations. i won't even try to describe the broad range of aromas that assaulted my olfactory senses. i fear that attempting to do so might trigger my gag reflex. but if you let your imagination run wild, you'd probably be close. like i said, it was total sensory overload.
the next day we did a tour to the cu chi tunnels.
the cu chi tunnels are a network of connecting underground tunnels that were the location of several military campaigns during the vietnam war and were the viet cong's base of operations. the tunnels were used by the viet cong guerillas as hiding spots during combat and the tunnels spanned over 200 km of area- all the way to the cambodian border. the tunnel systems served as communication and supply routes, and were used as hospitals, living quarters, and food/weapon stations for the guerrilla fighters. we saw the booby traps and weapons that they used to fight the US soldiers. many were barbaric so i decided not to post those pictures. visitors to the tunnels can actually pay to shoot m16 rifles or ak-47s or machine guns like the m60. it was a bit un-nerving to be walking around the tunnel systems listening to guns firing off in the background. we actually got the chance to crawl through a portion of the tunnels and it definitely made me feel for the cu chi people who lived in those tunnels for years with very little access to food, water, and air.
we also saw how rice paper is made, learned how they used old tires to make shoes, and ate a typical meal from that time- lotus tea and cooked tapioca which tasted a lot like a potato.
and yes, it is blasted hot and humid here.
