Day 2 & 3

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Day 2 began as we got on the bus and headed down towards the Cu Chi tunnels. The trip turned out to be longer than we thought as we went to the 'Cao Dai' temple which was a few hours away. The bus ride was great to see the other half of saigon, the country side. We soon found out that living quality only worsened as we got further out of the city.



On the way we stoped of at another one of the tour guides 'arranged' stops at what appeared to be a large warehouse. We walked inside and saw lots of Vietnamese craftsmen who were working with strange tools and what looked like sand. We weren't quite sure what they were doing untill we walked into the other room and saw the large gallery of this artwork they had been working on. It tunred out to be paintings made of eggshells which took anywhere between two weeks and a few months to make. After browsing the gallery and realising how much of a tedious process and how much effort these people put in, not to mention how good they were at what they did, I decided to buy one. There's a picture of it below.



The temple was quite the cultural experience for me and stans. Although it was quite boring and we new the Cu Chi tunnels were to come, it was interesting to actually see people who devoted such a great portion of their life to a specific religion. A group sang and played music on the top level while the others sat on the concrete floor below praying to 'their' god. The ceremony went on for a while and stans and I decided to leave and wait in the airconditioned bus.





Cu Chi tunnels were one of the main inspirations to travel to vietnam. The other main one for cox being firing a few guns. During the day the sun was fierce and when we arrived at the tunnels there was terrential rains, the two things we forgot was sunscreen and rain jackets. When we got off the bus we could already hear the ring of gunshots from the foreground, cox was rock hard already. We preceeded to buy our tickets then were led to a out door hut where we watched a short vietnamese propagand film from the 60s. After this, we walked through the jungle where we were shown vietcong foxfoles, booby traps and the intricate tunnel systems used by the viet cong during the war........which cox tried to fit down and failed miserably(shown below).



After we walked further into the jungle the ring of gun shots only became clearer. Coxs excitement was evident through the rapid increase of his walking pace. We arrived at the range where the expression on coxs face can only be compared to that of a mothers when she has a new born baby. Without question he walked straight up to the counter and ordered 10 bullets for the AK-47, i did the same. We were led down to the range where once again a man who could only be called 'tight lips' proceeded to fill the clip with 10 rounds. He told us to put what he called 'earmuffs' but were just old sony headphones someone had thrown out......they did nothing. Tightlips told cox 'go'. Cox and I were both blank faced as to the level of safety and care these people actually had for our safety. At this point terrential rain started to hail down, only intesifying the situation. He stepped up to the gun and released a round down to the end of the range.........we were both shocked abnd amazed at how loud these guns actually were...so loud the camera could barely pick up the sound. After we both finished our rounds Cox sprinted back up to the counter and ordered ten more, and then ten more. These been for the M16 and a pistol which we could only assume was the Viet Congs standard infintary pistol. Out of of the 30 people of there Cox undoubtabley spent the most money and time at the range, you could only presume he had the time of his life.







During the day we met 3 guys from belgiam who were also on our tour. We decided on a reasonbly quite night, only having a few beers with dinner. But walking back the hotel we bumped into the same 3 guys who invited us over for a beer. Seven beers later we were arm in arm listening to dub side of the moon which we took the privledge to play in the bar.




At about 2 we ran out of darts so decided to take a short walk down the street. As we exited the bar we saw a single seat becak. And being heavily intoxicated did not help the decision making capabilities, minutes later i was sitting on stanways lap cruising down the street in a becak. Minutes in we saw another becak and cox jumped in. A few minutes pass, as stanway lags behind due to his rider's fitness levels and also drinking stanways beer. Suddenly i could hear the faint whine of stanways voice gaining on my becak. Seconds later i saw the driver sitting in the passengers seat drinking a beer and smoking a ciggarete while stanway was peddling and singing his heart out. We got our darts, went back for a night cap and headed on home.





Both Stanway and I awoke to a horrific hang over which was slightly cured due to the greasy breakfast provided by the guesthouse. The day was ultimately due to be a quiet one as we both pushed our budgets a little bit. We went to the war memorial in the city. We had been told by many that this was quite a confronting experience, they did not lie. Pictured below is one of the bombs the Americans used during the war, it contained 5.7 tonnes of explosive and had the capacity to completely destroy anything within a hundred metres and cause serious damage to anything within a radius of 3.2km. Anyway this blog is getting quite long so we're most likely going to shorten it as the days go by and our inspiration slowly burns like a candle. Hopefully not but we'll see.

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