Southeast Asia Trip - Part Two

Here is the second part of my redux of the Southeast Asia trip - this part, Southern Vietnam! We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon.) The first thing that got me was the craziness of the traffic - there are no traffic laws, very few traffic lights/crosswalks/etc., and TONS of people zipping around on motorbikes. The Communist Party declared that it was seen as unpatriotic and bourgeois to own a car, so everyone bought motorbikes. This is light traffic on a fairly backwoods road. Everytime I had to cross a street I feared for my life. Lauryn and I learned real quick all the unspoken rules of traffic in Vietnam. Which are - motorbikes will swerve to avoid you - cars will not.

Light traffic in Saigon.

Our first night in Saigon was New Years Eve, but we were so exhausted that we bummed around the city, danced to horrible techno in the town square, then went to bed. The next morning we went on a bus tour to the Cao Dai compound and the Cu Chi tunnels.

Cao Daism is a wierd amalgamate religion comprising Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist beliefs, with some random saints and craziness thrown in there for good measure. This is the inside of their main temple, very psychedelic. The tiers of the floor represent levels of englightenment, and during the service everyone sits on their respective tier and mumbles.


This is me outside the temple, you could walk around the compound - which had some cool gardens and buildings.

Next we went to the Cu Chi guerilla tunnels, which are a series of tunnels in Southern Vietnam north of Saigon which the Viet Cong forces used to connect North (communist run) Vietnam with their Southern Communist sympathizers - as well as mount attacks on nearby Saigon. Most of the tunnels (which spanned hundreds of miles and were hand dug!) had collapsed due to bombing or disuse. There were a couple miles of preserved tunnels, one of the entrances seen here. for scale, the tunnel entrance is a little bit smaller than a sleeping pillow. The Cu Chi guerilla forces had huge bunkers, kitchens, armories, and schools connected by these tunnels, and often would live in them for months at a time.

Me in one of the bunkers

We got to crawl around in a widened tunnel (for fat Westerners) and Lauryn and I, being pretty tall, had a difficult time in them! Some of the fatter people got stuck, which was hilarious. Afterwards we had a refreshing snack of hot green tea and tapioca root (like a potato) rolled in peanuts.

Some Chinese tourists wanted a picture of white people, so we made them take our picture as well.

Me by an exploded tank. I tried to ride it Cowboy style but wound up making an ass of myself.

Our guide for the day, Slim Jim, was pretty awesome. He was a teacher from the Mekong Delta (south most part of Vietnam) who became a tour guide to perfect his conversational English, with plans to return to Southern Vietnam to teach English again. He had fought in the Vietnam war against the Viet Cong, and had some hilarious anecdotes. He confirmed Lauryn and I's assumption that all white people look the same to asians.


After the Cu Chi tunnels we arrived back in Saigon at around 6PM and seeing as it was still New Years Day, there was a huge carnival in a park adjacent to our hotel. We enjoyed some delicious beers from a local microbrewery - as a side note, Vietnam has recently seen a large explosion of microbreweries, taking traditional European styles such as pilsners, stouts, and even Belgian beers and incorporating Asian and tropical ingredients. A lot of the microbrews were much sweeter and more floral due to these ingredients.

I wasn't taking a lot of pictures in the city because I was having enough trouble getting around and attracting a lot of attention with my tattoos and piercings. While waiting for the tour bus, I learned from a guy that 'Tiga Numba 1!' which is to say that getting a tiger tattooed on your chest is the most common tattoo in Saigon. Also people would stare at our piercings and try to touch my tattoos. It was kind of creepy but also pretty nifty. In the US, I catch people staring at me, but when I look at them they quickly look away ashamed. In Southeast Asia, people would just stare for minutes at Lauryn and I - initially I ignored it, but after a while I kind of liked the attention. Then, I got really tired of being an attraction and stared back. It was pretty fun!

The next day our plans included bumming around Saigon before we left for Hoi An. We went to the War Surplus Market, which was mostly filled with cheap war kitsch. I did however pick up a Vietnamese Army outfit, which is pretty cool.

We went to the War Remnants Museum - previously known as the War Crimes Museum - which details the US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1975. It was pretty brutal, not due to any sensationalism (which surprisingly there wasn't much of) but because of the stark contrast between cultural narratives of events. In the US, I never learned the reasons behind our involvement in Vietnam, or even that it started during World War II. Because of the media coverage of the war, there were lots of photos detailing the US atrocities against the Vietnamese people. One of the craziest was an exhibit about Agent Orange and the effect of dioxins on the environment and population - effects that still effect Vietnam in big ways. For instance, the birth mutation rate in areas that were exposed to Agent Orange skyrocketed, and all over Vietnam we saw people that looked like they walked out of Total Recall. We also saw the old guillotine that the US and South Vietnamese forces used to execute suspected communists. Next to it is one of the 2' by 4.5' "cells" made of barbed wire and splintered wood where suspected communists were held for years at a time.


I think in 10-20 years there will be a similar museum in the Middle East detailing US atrocities. After being really bummed out about how fucked up our government is and the ties to the military industrial complex, I needed a fresh coconut.


After that we went to one of the best 'hidden' temples of Saigon. Getting there was half the journey, as our taxi driver did not know how to get to the temple, let alone the region of town we wanted to be in. We wandered around for an hour looking and finally found it in a little courtyard over 600 years old! Everything was coated in a thick mat of incense dust. There was a pond with TONS of turtles. There were turtles riding on the backs of turtles riding on the backs of turtles. It blew my mind, man.



Our next stop, the Presidential Palace, was also a journey due to language barriers and racism (some Vietnamese will not pick up Westerners) which I can understand. We did invade and fuck up their country.

Outside the palace

Lauryn with a solid gold Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh's Office

The Famous 'Fall of Saigon' helicopter. Sometimes they let tourists get a photo with it, but not when we were there. The basement of the palace had a War Room with old hand drawn maps of Vietnam and troop movements, along with old Cold War Era communications equiptment.

Afterwards, we headed to the airport and flew on JetStar (budget Asian airlines) to Hoi An. And that will be covered in the next post!