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Published: August 13th 2006
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Madness in Saigon!
This is typical traffic in Ho Chi Minh city...day or night....crazy!! Whats up... Last time we updated you we were escaping from pick pocket prosties in Nha Trang, since then the main theme of our trip has been shopping 😊 We spent our first day in Ho Chi Minh city doing pretty much nothing, just took care of some lose ends, booking bus / plane tickets and planning our trip to the Cu Chi tunnels.
The day at the tunnels was pretty cool, we have some pretty trippy pictures below that show you how small they are. The first set of tunnels was built when the Vietnamese fought for independence from the French colonists who inhabited Vietnam. These tunnels spanned 48 km and were dug at an average depth of 3 meters below ground. The diameter of these tunnels was 60cm / 80 cm, which is insanely small. They were built this way in order to prevent the french (who are much bigger from the vietnamese) from entering or chasing people through the tunnels. All the entrances and trap doors, and even air holes for circulation in the tunnals were extremely well camaflouged. The second set of tunnels were built by the people living around Cu Chi. The people of this
village lived in the south but took up arms in the name of the north, therefore they became enemies of the Americans during the Vietnam war (the Americans supported the south, trying to curb communism). These tunnels were a little bigger 120cm by 80cm, these are the tunnels that we crawled and wriggeld through. They are still really tiny and there are stretches of 20 meters with no light or exits, it got a little scary at some points :O The tunnels we travelled through were re-creations of the originals, because the americans used defoliant on the jungle to locate the tunnels and then made the landscape look like the moon using B 52 bombers. Even though there were 3 levels of tunnels at 3 / 6/ 9 meters deep, the bombs destroyed all of it......
After the tunnels we ate Pho for the millionth time and went to bed... haha... so lazy. Our last day in Ho Chi Minh was spent shopping at Ben Tahm market, we spent a good 5-6 hours there buying all kinds of stuff and getting in huge bidding wars.. kinda fun sometimes. The next morning we had to get up at 7am to
SLURRP!!!
Here's Will eating like he was raised in a barn....MANNERS OUT THE WINDOW!!! catch our bus to Phnom Penh, back in Camboida. The reason we did this is because it is $250 US to fly out of Ho Chi Minh and only $25 to fly out of Camboida, and the bus is only $11 .. no brainer. We spent the night at the Okay guest house that we stayed at before, they didnt have any rooms so they put us in a non airconditioned make-shift room that was pretty sketchy.... but we were all super tired and had to be up at 5am to catch a plane so we all passed out.
The plane ride was fine, and luckily when we landed in Bangkok Bryan and Will were able to change their plane ticket on the way home to eliminate a 32 hour layover in China... originally it was going to be a day outting..... but the visa alone for china is $50 US :P
We went to MBK and picked up our suits, they look good 😊 Will and Raj had some small changes made, and while they were fixing the suits we went shopping for jeans. Combined we managed to buy 14 pairs haha, they are only $20 for
Terrorist Attack!!!
A thief came into our room trying to steal our shit...Bryan got a good shot of him...call 1-800-669-TIPS Diesel jeans 😊 We spent a total of 7 hours at the mall waiting and shopping, we just got back to D&D to check out our haul for the day. On Sunday we wandered all over a huge market in central Bangkok and spent the rest of the day shopping on Khao San Road. One of the pics below shows "some" of the stuff we bought haha, we had to buy extra bags to bring it all home ....
We have 2 more days in Bangkok, we are just gonna chill by the pool and maybe hit up MBK again for some last minute shopping... then the 30 hour journey home :P Will and Bryan will be back in Van on the 16th at 1030 and Raj will be back at noon. We think there is a dinner happening on the night of the 17th in Van, and a bbq at Bryan or Nick's place on the night of the 19th (or Saturday, whatever day that is). We will keep you posted......
This is the last update from abroad, we will probabaly post one more when we get home to finish things off, but just in case we
The Hairy Beasts of the North!
Bryan and Rajan have nothing better to do but grow out their go-tees....Will couldn't cause he hasn't hit puberty yet... get lazy... Thanks for following along, hope you enjoyed the funny stories and crazy events.. we really enjoyed writing it, hope all of you enjoyed reading it....
Thats it for now 😊
Will, Nick, Raj and Bryan
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