Uncle Ho's Victory Garden

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

I thought I'd try a different blogging style for that last post; I had time, I was bored, and I felt like writing. Waiter always inspires me! That crazy kid.

First things first: We fired AK-47s today. Jealous? You should be!
But I'll get to that.

The last couple of days have been slightly lazy; Drew's been getting over his sickness and feeling like ass, and I had something that was making me feel like ass too. I theorised that it was actually our body clocks being way off; the last week we've been staying in rooms that don't have windows to the outside world, so there was no natural light coming in and we were waking up with alarms and not naturally. We'd wake up at 11am and both still feel dead tired, then be ready for bed at like 2pm. So we assumed that our body clocks were shot to hell. We didn't like the place we were staying, so we shuffled to a new joint down the road that has big windows. Best night's sleep ever, and we woke up at a reasonable time feeling refreshed.

Yesterday we cruised the sights of HCMC on foot; visited the Vietnamese version of Notre Dame Cathedral (it's a lot smaller and boring-er than the real thing), the Reunification Palace where the South Vietnamese government held court before they got kicked in the ass, and the War Remnants Museum.

It was an eye opener. History is written by the victor, yet the world only has the view from America of the Vietnam War. The museum gives the Vietnamese view (the actual victors) of the American War, and really brings home what the US did over here to both the land and the people. And how thoroughly they got their asses handed to them, but not without cost to everything in this country. There's people all over the place with deformations, missing limbs, and/or burn scars from the napalm and the defoliants used to destroy the jungle to 'flush out' the VC.

We needed a beer after that, so we settled in for a session at a random cafe/bar in Backpacker Ghetto Central. We chatted to a HOT waitress called Phuong. She's 22, studying English and computing. And SO CUTE! We're going back to visit her tonight.
We've also organised to meet up again with two Aussie chicks we were also chatting to last night, Ali and Jess. Both from Brisbane, which is bloody weird. Ali and I chatted for yonks about music since we have the same tastes. We were amazed that each had heard of the bands the other was yabbering about.

Today we visited the Cu Chi tunnels.
"The tunnels were used by NLF guerrillas as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous guerrilla fighters. The role of the tunnel systems should not be underestimated in its importance to the NLF in resisting American operations and protracting the war, eventually persuading the weary Americans into withdrawal."
Wikipedia says it so well. We crawled/frogmarched through 90metres of tunnel, and saw how damn ingenius the VC were. From the way they camoflaged the entrances, airholes, and chimney vents to the traps they built, you have to give them credit for ingenuity. Very survivalist, and very capable. No wonder they won.
The tunnels were tourist-friendly, concreted with electric lights every couple of metres. It wouldn't surprise me if they were widened so we fair tourists could fit, but apparently they remain at the same size the VC had them at in the 60s. Damn tight fit in some places! The Vietnamese are physically smaller people though, so it'd suit them better.

It was here that we also fired those AK-47s!! :D :D
Drew is a big First Person Shooter game fan, so he loved holding one of the guns he games with. It was just a simple firing range where you pay US$1.30 per bullet. So we bought 10 each, fired five singles and the rest on auto. It was all really old and poorly maintained equipment and bullets, but at least now we can say we've fired an automatic weapon. There was an American dude there going fully gung-ho and shooting all professional like...guess that's part and parcel of a gun loving country, to feed a stereotype.

So now we're off to have a kip before meeting the Aussie chicks again, and we'll be sorting out our transport to Nah Trang tonight. I think it's a 10 hour bus trip for us tomorrow morning, suffering from hangovers. Yippee!

PS: Jono has put our photos of everything up to Singapore onto the Photobucket. Check it out.