Here she is.... the long awaited Vietnam update. After hopping off the bus to make the dusty walk across the border from Cambodia to Vietnam, the adventure began.

Yeah... Vietnam sucks
Brett making his way across the Cambodia/Vietnam border
Straight from the sea to my belly
A tempting can of coke through the bus window
Vietnam War photographers last shot
Young rice farmers
Hobb's entering the Vietcong tunnel
This tank has been here since it hit a landmine in 1970
B-52 leftovers
Sweet mother of God
Our motorbike drivers
US$5 worth of Vietcong AK-47 ammo purchased
US$5 worth of Vietcong AK-47 ammo unloaded
Another day in the life

(by correspondent Hobbs)
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday afternoon. Ho Chi Minh City was formerly known as Saigon before it was renamed after the Vietnam War (over here its the Amercian War) era leader. Everything in Vietnam is an adventure even crossing the street. I thought I had seen some impressive traffic and creative driving in my life at home and abroad but Vietnam sets a knew standard. Every street contains an endless stream of motor bikes with no real break to make a typical crossing possible. The best way to discribe it is that the motorbikes resemble a school of fish, there are no discernable lanes of traffic and when the school comes upon an obstacle some go around one side and the others go around the other side. So after watching the locals we waded into the traffic, inching a few steps at a time. Your instincts tell you to run across in the face of approaching cars and bikes but crossing slowly allows the drivers to steer around you.

In the middle of Saigon is a well known market called Ben Trahn. We opened up our trip with a fantastic meal of fried spring rolls, fresh spring rolls, and beef with vegetables. The food here may be better than the food in Thailand. It seems that there may be a leak or two in the clothing assembly lines in Thailand and Vietnam because after paying the 3 dollar dinner tab we headed into the main part of the market and discovered it contained arguably the world's greatest outlet mall. Knowing that I would be flying back stateside soon enough I purchased a North Face backpack and set about filling it up. I emerged with two North Face backpacks, a Helly Hansen snowboarding jacket, four Lacoste shirts, a Nike Dry-Fit tennis shirt, two pairs of Puma shoes, a polo shirt, and some colonge. Total bill under $150.

(by imbedded correspondant Diggans)
We had thought about renting our own motorcycles in Saigon to tour the surrounding areas, but after deciding that would most likely end in certain death we hired two local motorcycle driver's to take us out on their hog's (half Vespa/half Harley).

Our first stop was the very anti-American war museum that is within the perimeter of the city. You walk through the entrance to discover an amazing array of US tanks, choppers, planes, armored fighting vehicles and artillery that never made it home. The courtyard area is surrounded by two buildings that house the war photographer's exhibit and the hideous "proof that it was an awful war" exhibit.

The photographer's exhibit houses the photography of those covering the war that never made it home. As this museum is not PG-rated, there were some very intriguing photos showing images from the war depicting actions that I would have never thought could happen. Make a list of the top ten worst things that you could do to another human being and I'm sure they were all done during the war and they were thouroughly covered by the photographer's "in the trenches." The picture I've put on the site sums up a lot of the photos. The image would show chaos, or in the case of landmines- absolute calm, their captions reading "the last exposure from so-and-so's camera."

The other building on the premise contained small arms weapons, a horrendous collection of war photography, and even fetuses of unborn babies in jars that had been affected by the use of agent-orange. An entire wall was dedicated to gruesome photos of those affected by agent-orange- the chemical that the US spread heavily across the jungle to kill the thick foliage that enemy troops used for hiding. It obviosly affected a lot more than the weeds.

It was weird to see the "American War" from the Vietnam side of opinion. I've read a few books while I've been here from the American point of view on the war. POW's that underwent ruthless torturing and stories of men seeing their best friends get their heads blown off right in front of them by Vietcong morter fire. But it was sobering to see the images that they don't show in America of US soldiers proudly holding up half a Vietnemese body ripped to pieces by their own M-16 or grenade as they stormed a village with "suspected Vietcong." More than anything it portraid a sad state of humanity- from both sides.

Often while travelling you have epiphonic (is that a word?) moments where you just can't help but to be overwhelmed with the tingly "I can't believe I'm here" feeling. The first big monsoon of the season decided to hit Southern Vietnam as we left the museum and made our way 70 kilometers out of town to the Cu Chi tunnels. Brett and I were hanging on for dear life on the backs of these motorbikes while our drivers were relatively unaffected by the rain pissing down in sideways sheets producing 6 inches of flood water on the road. They sped through the water, my rear-end picking up on the feeling every now and again of the back tire searching for some pavement or dirt to grip on to. Motorbikes, cars, bicycles, horns honking, rain pissing down.... you just have to close your eyes and think "I can't believe I'm here." That old Baz Lurhman song "Wear Sunscreen" has a line it it that I tunrned and quoted to Brett as his driver passed mine- "Do one thing everyday that scares you."

We made it alive to the Cu Chi tunnels, the 250 kilometers of underground tunnels the Vietcong dug to disguise their location and try and elude the B-52 bomber's attacks. After watching a very anti-America film for a warm-up, things didn't get any better for us American's as our guide explained that his grandfather had been shot between the eyes by a US soldier. We walked through new growth forest as, it was explained to us, agent-orange was heavily used in this area to clear the forest, among 500 pound bomb craters and trenches we came upon our first objective. In a small clearing of the forest we were instructed to see if we could find the entrance to the tunnel. We searched under the leaves for a few minutes before discovering the small wooden door (that would swell when it got wet to keep water out of the tunnel) that you see Hobber's trying to fit his fat ass into in the picture.

We got to climb through the "tourist" version of the tunnels- a 150 foot section that has been further scraped out to accomodate Western sized people. It was still a very dark, thick-aired tunnel in which I had to bust out a few yoga moves to fit through- a claustrobics nightmare. We got to see dining rooms, living quarters and even an area where the Vietcong would take scrap US artillery and make the metal barbs that could be found in all of their booby-traps that killed or wounded many US soldiers, and to think there was about 249.9 other kilometers of tunnels we couldn't fit in. We ate tapioca root with a peanut-sugar mixture just as the Vietcong had done when their rice fields looked more like the moon than lush green food sources after the B-52's got done with them.

Then came the sweet part.... the shooting range. This was a little more civilized opportunity to fire weapons of war than we had discovered in Cambodia. They wouldn't throw in a water buffalo or a chicken with your ammunition purchase- and there were no grenades or RPG's. We decided to unload a few rounds from an old Vietcong AK-47. This was a very loud and powerful gun... the tiger target that I hit proved that... he was hurtin'. Right by the shooting range they had a stand where you could by rice wine with dead cobra snakes in the bottle. I was turned down when I asked if we could drink a couple of bottles of rice wine, then come annialate something with the M-30 automatic machine gun. Damn American's.

The ride back to Saigon fell right in the middle of Saigon rush-hour. Sarcastically I asked our drivers if they could be a little more aggressive- bad mistake. That brought out the Dale Earnhardt Jr. in our driver's and off they went. Brett was taking video with his camera and at one point I pop into the picture, turn around and make a camera gesture as to say, "You gotta get this on film!" It was exhilerating.

We took the night train up to Nha Trang... a beach town about 10 hours North of Saigon. I had some sleeping pills I had gotten in an airport and offered one to Brett. He obliged and within 5 minutes was passed out in his reclining seat the the ticket people had promised us were "sleeper's." Hobb's is quite the snorer when he gets ripping and all the Vietnemese people starting looking at me like it was my fault when Hobb's started to cut loose on the 747-esque horn blowing.

Did a lot of sitting on the beach under cabanas looking at all the Scandanavian girls in Nha Trang. We had made it to paradise. See exhibit A on the photos for some "shootin' from the hip" undercover photographic proof. One pictures shows the nice little Vietnemese lady that made us a feast of lobster and shrimp from her little set-up shown. She fans the coals into a flame, throws on the whole lobster, mixes up some fresh lime juice, salt and pepper, cuts the lobster open and off you go. With the Scandanavians on the horizon, feasting on fresh-from-the-sea lobster and shrimp... life really sucked. Anybody who is thinking about backpacking around the world... I would not recommend it. Look at the kind of shit you have to put up with.

Then the sad day came... Hobb's left onto Hong Kong and Tapaei for his voyage home. I did some scuba diving on a reef off the coast of Nha Trang. I thought for sure there would be some wreckage from the war to dive on, but the dive instructor's said that all wreckage had been scrapped by the government, they don't waste any steel. So instead of Me, Brett, the Scandanavians and the lobster.... it was now just me, the Scandanavians and the lobster. Somebody has got to do the dirty work....