Nietnam Feb 26 ++

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Feb 26
I am headed for Vietnam today. I had a 15 min hike with a 40lb pack on my back to the subway then a 40 min subway ride to get to the airport. Once i finally arrived and checked in i got some breaky. I just picked something of the board. It turned out to be small fried fish hot spices and rice.ehhh. Normally i try and choke down what ever i order but it was probably 9 am and i couldn't handle spicy and fishy food that early so i chucked it and went for the soft boiled eggs and some toast with coconut butter. much better choice.
The plane was on time and everything went smoothly.
When i walked out of the airport there was Albert (Dana's dad, an old high school friend) was waiting there with open arms. It was great to see a familiar face. We heckled for a taxi and were on the way to his house. Sick im in Nam and hanging out with my old mates dad. No worries. After he showed me his sweet pad we headed out for some food.
He took me to a place where the girls are dressed all pretty and normally keep serving guys beer like a hooters type place. However neither Albert or I drink so they were all laughing at us. Like who goes to hooters and doesnt get wings(even though though their wings suck). Any way i had Ox spinal cord because they were out of Geko haha. Albert got steamed calamari and we split a dried fish salad. The ox spine was inversing. it had a very gooey texture but not bad. The calamari was ok and the dried fish salad was pretty weird but not bad. After lunch we headed back to his sweet 3 bedroom pad and hung out a bit. My feet really started itching and i felt my sinuses were bad so we headed to the pharmacy because the "special" cream Albert gave me wasn't living up to its name. haha well Any way the pharmacy was interesting we were miming out symptoms and writing down the drug names. It was hilarious finally we got some itch cream and some antibiotics for my sinuses.
When we got back Albert took a nap and i did some emails and planed out what i was doing the next few days.
For dinner we went to another "hooters" restaurant because this one had the kangaroo that Albert liked. I had helix which after some miming i though it was going to be goat but turned out to be snails haha we were way off. They were actually pretty good though. The roo was really tasty as well.
After dinner we hit Apocalypse Now night club, apparently one of Albert's favorites. When we first got there it was pretty dead but it was early. Although, Albert had managed to start kicking some game to some cute young local girls. There was some interesting conversation passing through the language barrier. But we managed to get them on the dance floor for a bit but they soon gave up so we moved on. I decided to hit the dance floor hard. Something i never really do but i hadn't been out in ages and said why not. It was too loud to have a convo. anyway and with the language barrier that would be impossible. So i was dancing with Alberts neighbor who oddly enough was Vietnamese American recently from Easton, very weird. Any way she and i danced it up until i found another small cute local girl. She and i danced all night. She was however a terrible dancer, no rhythm. At one point I noticed whatever i did she would try and mimic. I am not a good dancer to begin with and then have her try and copy me was even worse. Then i notice some of her friends were mimicking me as well it was freaking hilarious it was the blind leading the blind. A white kid with little dance skills inadvertently teaching Vietnamese how to dance. Im sorry i let down the talented dancers in the US. haha Finally we all decided to leave but she .Tuygen. gave me her number before we all called it a night.

Feb 27
This morning Albert and i did his "normal" routine of walking down the street to some local stands where we ordered a sandwich from one lady the continued on a bit and ordered coffee from another. Then the lady delivered our sandwiches, which were awesome and the coffees were so sweet you could have sweetened 1000 coffees with the one, but they were good. After breaky i hopped on the back of a motor taxi and headed for the heart of the city. Where i would do my "historical/cultural" walk. The first thing i hit was Pho 2000 the most famous place to get the nation breakfast pho. Apparently Bill Clinton even had some there. Even though i just ate i can never pas up food especially if its something I've never had before. After my second breaky i had my first experience crossing the street. Wow that was intense Albert's tip was to keep moving never stop. The people here predict where you are going and work around that, if you stop and they were thinking you were going to keep moving you get hit. It was like a real life version of frogger. You get an adrenaline rush when you make it across. Id almost consider it an extreme sport defiantly at rush hour in the city around a circle. Wow that would be nuts. Any way my first stop was the fine arts museum. That was a bust, crap museum and crap art. So on we went to Ho Chi Minh City Museum. This one was interesting it had cool things inside. Then i hit the War Remembrants museum. This one was intense it had tons of war photos some very graphic it also had alot of old weaponry. I spent much more time than i though i would have in there and could have probably spent even more but i had to push on. Next stop was the Reunification Palace. This one i had the company of a Indian traveler we both were "lost" at the back of the palace and had to walk around to the front together so we got talking and walked around the palace together. This "house" was pretty cool big meeting rooms and entertainment rooms but the basement was the coolest it had alot of old maps, radios, and other war related items still down there.
After that i was debating on what to do because Albert had to go to work and i wouldn't have any way to get in to his house. So i called Tuygen to meet up for some coffee so were to meet at 8 a a local coffee shop. I had some time to kill, so i headed to the local Cathedral and post office to take some more photos. Then i tried going to another museum but it was closed so i headed to a local pagoda. Which was really cool because there were 2 guys that were praying and i followed them around.
They walk around to different rooms carrying incense and leaving one behind at each location. It was really cool. There was some sort of a pond thing out side with 100s of turtles in it. I dont know if turtles are wholly or not but it was sick. Turtles are cool animals.
When i finished checking out the Pagoda it must have been around 5 ish. I had stopped to buy some green tea and as i turned around i noticed the "RUSH HOUR" wow it was crazy. I can't describe it but ill try. Im sure you have seen commercials or something for the migration of animals in Africa. Well this looked similar except they were people on motorbikes but they weren't all headed in the same direction. I decided to cross the street. Slow and steady won the race. It was awesome i wanted to scream when i made it to the other side. Crazy After staring at the masses for 20 mins i headed to some local eatery. Where i had pork and rice but it was quite tasty.
I still had some time to kill before i met Tugyen so i went to a city square and chilled a bit. Before i new it i had 3 guys come up to me and started talking to me. They just wanted to pratice their English with me. We had some small conversations, they were very nice guys. 8 o'clock rolled around and i said my goodbyes and went to meet Tuygen. Unlike the guys she doenst speak much English so there were alot of silences in our conversations but my Lonely Planet has some words in the back so we used that. It also had some photos we used as well to make small talk. Once the coffee shop closed we walked around a bit then she got her scooter and drove me home.

Feb 28
Today i went on a Tour to the Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. The temple and the temple town were beautiful. Apparently, its a small town based around their religion. They must like peace because they pray to all gods buda jesus ect. pretty neat however i think they were part of the Viet Cong so they may have a peaceful religion accepting all they must not be open to politics haha. Apparently they pray ever 6 hrs. Noon 6pm midnight and 6am pretty crazy.
After the Temple service we saw we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels. This was an extensive underground tunnels system the Viet Cong used against the US in the war. The tunnels were amazing. We got to crawl through a tunnel they had made twice as big for tourists. It was still pretty small i couldn't imagine crawling army style down there in the dark with a Aka 47. Which i got to fire by the way. You could pay a certian amount of money and fire a different number of guns it was pretty expensive but i had met this swiss guy so we split the cost and got to fire 5 shots each. It was pretty cool but the gun was mounted to the wall so you couldn't really get a feel for how powerful it was, no kickback.
While we were there it had poured quite a bit, to the point were we had to walk around in ankle deep water. We had to take shelter for about 20 mins in one of the exhibit rooms. It was one of the entrances to the old tunnels i found the tunnel door and snuck in. I had to use my night vision on my camera to get anywhere. It was really dark but sick.
When we got back Albert and i met up for dinner he was feeling a bit sick so wanted some comfort food so we went to a lotteria knock off burger king type place. We had some burgers and fried chicken nice break from local food. After dinner Tuygen picked me up and took me to a local cafe where there was a band playing American covers. They were awesome no accents or anything better than most cover bands in the US. Once the cafe closed we went to a city park to hang out but for some reason got kicked out by the cops so she took me home.

March 1 Sunday
In the morning i used the net and caught up on some stuff. Then Tuygen took me to the local water park. Wasn't top on my list of things to do in Vietnam but ill give it a go. First off there were 1000s of kids running around screaming and splashing "oh man this is gonna be fun, then i was well we will ride the slides and stuff at least" But where does she take me first to the lazy river chalk full of kids walking down it splashing along the way. It was weird. After about 1/2 lap we got out and were headed for a pool that was like a beach a very gradual entry. I stopped her and pointed to the slide. So i went down a slide or 2 then she took me to the zip cord that stops short and you fall into the water. "Alright now were having a bit of fun" but she didnt come down any of them except the one where it was a 2 person tube. While i was on a slide she had met up with some friends so we all hung out a bit and they took me on some more slides.
We finally left the madness and headed to grab some lunch where we didnt talk at all. It was too much effort and i didnt really know what else that was easy and to talk about. So she watched the movie on tv and i was looking through my LP. She asked me to go the the movies after lunch but i declined because i was to meet up with Albert and go for a night on the town and to buy some bus tickets down town. So Tuygen and i exchanged info and she took me back. The only conversations we had wa texting back and forth on her phone apparently she can read better then speak or listen, pretty weird.
When i got back Albert and i headed to the city center to hit the streets. We found a nice little bar with some cute girls so we hung out there for a while. Again Albert was kicking some good game. After some time passed we walked around a bit more and watch some local kids playing hacky sack with some weird badminton looking thing. Then we grabbed a bit to eat and headed home

March 2 Monday
Today i had a tour down to the Mekong delta. The floating market sucked. You wouldn't have known it was a market unless you were told. Thats the second floating market i have been disappointed by. Apparently there are some good ones but i haven't found one yet. Form there we went to see how coconut candy was made that was pretty interesting. Then we got to see how to make rice paper and rice crispys aka popped rice. That was really neat the rice paper is made from a milky rice water poured on to a steam press type thing and then pealed off. Then for the rice crispys they heat sand up super hot and throw in the rice and it pops like pop corn.
After that they gave us lunch and some local performers put on a show for us. The instruments were really interesting. One of them only had one string but it sounded beautiful the other looked like a banjo but was much nicer sounding. The signers were very good and every thing went together beautifully. After the performance was over they took us back to land where Grace a (new Zealnd girl i met) and i walked around the market and tried a few weird local deserts i supposed thats what you'd categorize them as. One was a rice porridge type thing and the other was a jelloish cup of fruit flavored stuff. Then we got shuttled back to town where I met Albert out for our last meal we went to a nice Japaneses place and had some sushi. Then we went home i packed up and went to bed.

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