Vietnam

So we started the day off in Vietnam walking around the city and made our way to the war museum. It was a really interesting learning about the war from the other point of view, but after seeing all the horrible things people suffered at the hands of the invading U.S. forces I stand by my original statement that there is no good thing that comes from war. After the museum Scott & I headed to lunch and got some traditional pho soup which was really delicious, but to give credit where credit is due the places in Seattle do the soup justice. After a long day in a a crowded hot city we decided to head back to our hotel and shower and change and go hit the town. Ho Chi min city reminds me of NYC in a lot of ways. Its very intense and dirty and crowded and really in your face but also very vibrant and exciting. We were walking around to a bar and a guy started asking me about my tattoos. We ended up going with him and his people to some bar and then a few other people joined us and there was a total of 10 of us roaming the streets of HMC bar hopping. We had a couple of canadian guys and 3 girls from England and 1 girl from New Zeland with us, so it was a pretty international crowd. We stayed at this go go bar that was very Vegas cheese but they opened up the roof top for us which was cool. Two American girls ended up joining our table as well. Scott got tired around 1:00 am and went back to the hostel to crash. He came back 30 minutes later and told me that they had lock the hostel up with a gate and pad lock, and on the way back so girl on a motor bike that he said hi to in an alley jumped off her bike and grabbed his junk and offered him "boom boom"" when he said no she started pulling him on to the bike and he ran off. We just hung at the bar and the girls let us crash on the floor of there room. I couldn't sleep so a couple of us just walked around the city. As the sun was rising people were up getting ready for the day. When we got to our hostel, it turns out they lock the gates at night but there is a night guard that sleeps next to the gate to let people in.. so we got into our room showered and got ready for a tour of the Cochie tunells. These are the tunles the vietcong used to fight the Americans. Our guide was this really great witty and funny guy who also fought in the Vietnam war. It was crazy to hear stories from the vietcong point of view from someone who was there. We actually crawled through the tunnels that were 150 meters and they were hot and scary and small! No way a big ass American could fit into one of those. On our tour we ended up making friend with an English and Dutch girls who were sitting in front of us on the tour. They kept refering to us as "dumb Americans" because of some of the conversations we had. We ended up meeting for dinner later that night and decided to head to Cambodia as a group. The best part of traveling for me is meeting people and when you are on a long hot 10 hour bus ride it is nice to have a mix of people from other cultures. Vietnam is a great country but one can see the scars that the war has left here. Prostitution is rampant (I heard that almost 30% of the women in HMC are in the sex trade) and American dollars are prized a bit too much here but the people are very friendly and they don't seem to mind staring and looking at you. When I went for my early morning walks people stared openly. Some of it had to do with my size since I am much bigger than the population but also there aren't a lot of brown people and tattoos are illegal here so I seem to be a triple oddity, but when I walked passed I always smiled and the people always smiled back...The traffic in Vietnam is nuts, there are no rules or lights every one just goes but after a few jerky attempts at crossing the road we finally got the hang of it. There is a cadence to the chaos and once you fall into the flow of the traffic it seems to work. There were several times where I thought I was going to get hit but kept walking and it feel like the motor bikes graze past you, but never hit you. We agreed to meed Zara and Wilika at the bus station in HMC and get going to Cambodia in the mid morning.