Ho Chi Minh City

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Known as Saigon to the locals. This town is just dripping with money compared to the rest of Vietnam. Brand new Beamers and Mercs fight their way through to throngs of scooters, and the scooters are newer too - more 'wave RS-X' bikes and less 'super dreams'. Saigon is also the ultimate place to get rip off Louis Vuitton Stuff. I got a pimpin belt and gem got this huge overnight bag on rollers, sweet.

We were here for about 3 days. on our first day we went to the war remnants museum. the guide book describes it as "a chilling reminder of how hateful human beings can be." they have a nice collection of captured american planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery. on the inside you learn about the lead up to the war and the misguided reasons why the US invaded, next to that are letters from governments all over the world urging the US to pull out, and next to that front pages of newspapers from all over with protest stories on them. seems there was a lot of opposition to the american war in vietnam. what follows are a chilling series of photographs from a bunch of war photographers. gruesome as photos. there was a total of 183 war reporters killed during the american war. the pictures included all sorts of gory stuff, executions, mass graves, decapitations, napalm burns, dismembered soldiers, everything. but by far the most disturbing photos were the ones of the agent orange victims. the soldiers themselves all get cancer eventually, but its thier kids that suffer the most. People poisoned with Agent orange have the most horribly disabled and disfigured kids. massive swollen heads and shrivelled arms, eyes way too far apart- you get the idea. (dioxin is the active ingredient, i remember hearing something about it leaking or being dumped near some houses in napier a few years ago). its awful to look at. you come out of that room feeling physically sick and angry at the americans for dumping that stuff on all these poor people (3 million Vietnamese were killed during the war, 2 million of them civilians. 60,000 ameriacans killed). Walking around saigon after seeing those terrible photos, every now and then you see somebody who looks like they've been afftected by agent orange. a shopkeeper whos head is a funny shape or eyes too far apart- its sad. theres a movement to try and get compensation for vietnamese that are affected by the agent orange poisoning but most of them are dead now anyway. Phosphorous bombs were another type of illegal weapon used by the americans, and cluster bombs too. Im sure the same use of illegal weapons is going on in iraq right now. sad stuff, nobody speaks much inside that museum.

We also went to the Saigon zoo! its not the best zoo in the world, and a lot of the enclosures are cramped and dirty, but it was cool too see elephants and hippos and rhinos and tigers and oragutans and monkeys and lions up close. i dont think ive seen hippos and rhinos before. hippos are HUGE! and loud when they belch and burb at each other. also a lot of cool butterflys that just float around the zoo. We had a beer at one of the famous rooftop bars too, cost us over 10 times more than what we usually get beers for. good view but wont be going there again.

On our last day in Saigon we did a half day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. this is where some of the most fearsome fighting in the whole american war was done. the 'Iron triangle' was a key area on the approach to saigon for the advancing north vietnamese army. unfortunately for the americans the peaceful Cu Chi people had built a 200km network of tunnels and caverns under this area to hide from the french armies years ago. they also had traps with bamboo spikes at the bottom that were used for hunting tigers, it didnt take much modification to go to 'hunting americans'. these traps come in different variations, the one foot spike trap, the rolling trap, and our favourite, armpit clipping trap. these all involve falling down a hole and getting spiked by various devices with iron stakes on them. When you think of tunnels you think of something you can stand up and run through, but these are SERIOUSLY small. crawling room only. the entrances are disguised, heavilly trapped areas with a small hole in the bottom of a pit that i would struggle to fit through. all the tunnels were built on 3 levels, 3m 6m and 9-12m deep. the kitchens and dining rooms have sophisticated exhaust systems so any smoke will emerge a long way away, so any bombs dropped wouldnt hit them. its seriously hot down there, and seriously scary. theres a small tunnel (widened for westerners of course) that you can go through. its dark and small and hot. once your in you cant turn around, and have to go down stairs to get deeper before you can come up again. i was freakin out a bit in there. for these Cu Chi people to fight out of these tunnels for weeks, months on end must've taken nerves of steel. our guide said that there was 5000 american tanks in this small area at one stage. there are massive bomb craters everywhere too. the Cu Chi people are also incredibly proud of the fact that they were so efficient at killing americans. our guide rattled off nicknames like "the 16 year old girl american killer" and "the fruit picking sniper". aparently there was one guy who was so good at placing mines and throwing grenades they called him "mr explosion." in the morning they would fight the americans, and in the evenings they would tend to the crops - still gotta eat. their motto for a work day was "a rifle in one hand, plough in the other."

On the way back from the tunnels we visited "handicapped handicrafts." you can imagine what that was like, but the quality of the work they produced was just stunning. absolutely incredible. we wouldve bought something had it not been so expensive! a lot of mother of pearl inlaid dishes and eggshell vases, real time consuming stuff. impressive though.

Saigon really is the place to go shopping. theres a lot of cool stuff here, i came close to buying a fake burton snowboarding jacket for $50NZ, i think the outer material mightve been the real deal but the lining was crap. they've also got HEAPS of North face knock offs, but they look legit. we didnt get anything, but if you're in the market for a cheap technical raincoat, this is the place to get it! And like i said before, Louis Vuitton, gucci, Chanel, all that stuff for 10, 20 bucks. pretty cool.

While we were here there asian indoor games were on. so just around the corner from our hotel there was a huge festival each night. that was cool to walk around and take photos, all the famillies with thier tired kiddies, old people. young couples. the cool thing to do is park up your motorbike at the edge of a footpath and recline on the seat with your back against the handle bars, gossiping. sometimes they even rev them up, its funny as. just like the fast and the furious but on scooters.

We're back in Bangkok. I feel like ive never seen so many cars before. or tourists. We really arent the odd ones out anymore!

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