Blogs from Cu Chi, Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 8

Gooooood Morning Vietnam!!! There's the cheesy crap outa my system. the guesthouse was the easiest to reach yet, well the dorm room was at the top of the building up ten flights of stairs! to start off the traffic in Saigon is properly hectic crossing the road risks life and limb as rules don't seem to apply as millions of moto bikes swerve and beep there way past each with between 1-4 people on, every now and again a pig or two aswell, all trying to get somewhere as fast as possible, pavements are basically extensions of the road right? went to dinner with a french guy at the market which was alright, the ice cream was awesome tho even if it was more expensive than our meal & a beer. the next day it was ... read more

Mr. Phuong is my English teaching friend from HCMC. He is quite the friend. I met him as I was bicycling down a Saigon street. He pulled up beside me on his motorbike and said: "If you would just stop at that pub ahead, I'll buy you a beer if you talk English with me. I don't like beer but I stopped anyway. I guess that was the start of our friendship, doing things neither one of us finds all that interesting just to be with someone who is interesting. Mr. Phuong is an English teacher, public and private. He is an excellent musician on a number of instruments. He composes songs. He leads a band. He started his married life past forty but now has a beautiful wife and two beautiful children. His Mother speaks ... read more

Woke up early again had a lovely breakfast and left on boat and then bus towards the Cu Chi tunnels. Cu Chi is a city which has lots of tunnels left over from the war. There is a huge network of tunnels which were tiny inside and have hidden entrances. Here is a photo of me in one of them. There were huge bomb craters everywhere. Then were taken to the shooting range where we could try and shoot a gun. The sound walking towards the range made me jump, it was so loud. Standing near the gun I had to use earplugs and headphones to attempt to ease the sound, it was painfully loud. I had to close my eyes when I pulled the trigger as I was so scared. My legs were shaking it ... read more

Am 15.2. haben wir eine Tagestour zu einem Cao Dai Tempel und zu den Cu Chi Tunnels unternommen. Hier in Vietnam ist es sehr schwer alleine irgendwo hin zu kommen, am billigsten und einfachsten kommt man an all die touristischen Orte, wenn man eine Tour bucht. Es war nicht das schlechteste, denn so erfuhren wir mehr über das Leben in den Cu Chi Tunnels. Doch zuerst zum Cao Dai Tempel, der sich etwa 50 km von Saigon entfernt befindet und Tây Ninh heisst. Der Caodaismus ist eine noch sehr junge Religion, was vielleicht die kitschige Bauweise des Tempels erklärt. Sie wurde 1926 in Südvietnam gegründet. Der Religionsstifter war Ngô Vân Chiêu, der die Offenbarung vom Gott Cao Dai, erfuhr. Der erste Anführer dieser Religionsgemeinschaft war ein bekannter Lebemensch und Opiumraucher. Er änderte seinen Lebenswandel durch den ... read more

We figured we had to do at least one tourist thing in Vietnam while Chuck was here. We decided to do the Cu Chi Tunnels and the caodai temple. The Cu Chi tunnels are the underground tunnels the Vietcong used to escape from the b-52 bombs and sneak up into the U.S. Army camps and set traps. The people wound up living underground and their is a complex network of tunnels about 200 or more kilometers or tunnels. They let you go underground and crawl through these tight tunnels about 20 feet undergound. Most who know me know how much I love small confined spaces so that was a bit interesting. I admit I was not happy at all about the thought of crawling 200 or so feet underground in a tiny tunnel. I did it, ... read more