American Killer Awards and Vietnamese dating tips

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Perspective is such an interesting thing...Yesterday, my first full day in Vietnam, we went on a tour of the tunnels made by the Viet Cong during the American War (we call it the Vietnam War) just outside Ho Chi Minh City.

Our tour guide was great. He gave us a full introduction to Vietnamese dating. He kindly explained to us that motorbike ownership is the sole criterion for the girlfriend you will have in Vietnam. If you have no motorbike you have no girl. If you have 1 motorbike that gets you 1 girlfriend, 2 gets you 2 girlfriends but he doesn't recommend more than 2 because Vietnamese women love to gossip with each other and they would find out. He is from a small village up north so he gets away with having 1 girl up there and 1 down here. But it's not as simple as it sounds. In terms of how good-looking a girlfriend you have-that depends on what kind of motorbike you own. If it's a Chinese motorbike ($200-300) she wont be very pretty. The next steps up are Vietnamese, then Korean and finally Japanese motorbikes which cost $7000-then she will be gorgeous. I'll try and take some pics of girlfriends on Japanese bikes vs. Chinese for evidence.

First thing when we arrived to the tunnels was to watch a circa 1970 propoganda video about the American War. It showed the villagers and how they had had to arm themselves for protection against the American soldiers and their bombs. About 20 times during the 15 minute video the phrase such and such soldier was given "The American Killer Award" for killing blank number of American soldiers. The honesty was almost refreshing. Why call it something fancy like the Purple Heart? Just call it what it is. We also saw a map of the extensive tunnel system that the Vietnamese had built below ground during the war-tunnels all the way from Saigon (the Center of Ho Chi Minh City), out into the countryside, and to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The guide helpfully suggested that if we wanted to go to Cambodia next we could just crawl for 2 weeks through the tunnels and we wouldn't need a visa. The tunnels had 3 different layers with everything necessary for daily living and for fighting a war. The villages had been so bombed out that the they all were forced to live underground in order to survive. There were underground kitchens, food storage, places to make weapons, etc. We had a tour of the kinds of weapons that they had constructed-very medievel scary contraptions involving numerous sharp metal stakes. Many had evolved from tiger and other animal traps. The final highlight of the tour (which cost $5 each for transport, tour and even a snack) was getting to actually crawl through one of the tunnels. Of course they had to make these special tourist tunnels bigger so that we wouldn't get stuck (and die as they put it in the video when describing what happened to American soldiers who tried to climb through the tunnels). I do have a great pic of our friend Tony getting a tad stuck when he tried to fit through a regular size entry to the tunnel.

After the tour, I was definitely feeling the jet lag. I needed a massage! So Wendy asked me "Would you rather have the $7 an hour massage or the $3 hour massage?" I chose option 2, also because that was the one at the Blind Massage School that I had really been wanting to try. I think it was the best massage of my life. I kept thinking "Oh, this is my favorite part here with the shoulders." And then minutes l would think "No, this is definitely my favorite part with the lower back," and later "No, no, definitely this with my neck....or my hands...my feet...my scalp". She truly hit every part of my body. Even parts I'd forgotten I had and certainly never thought to massage. Though parts of it were painful I admit-like when she really went to town on my forearms. But I was torn between protesting or suffering in silence since she could easily interpret that as needing to go light on the rest of the massage which I did not want.

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Photos

Saigon
Tu Duc tunnels

Saigon
Tiger-catcher converted to human trap

Saigon
Headed down into the tourist-size tunnel

Saigon
More motorbikes than people

Comments

[Doug]

A touch of clarity -
Purple Heart - definition is not when you shot an enemy combatent but whe you are shot by one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart American GI's called tunnel rats went into the tunels to roust out hidden Viet Cong during the war. Though the section of tunnel used for tourists may have been enlarged or just created for tourists.