My local coffee spot

Here at my brothers place in Thailand I found the best place to go for coffee was at a newly opened cafe on the side of the highway a couple of blocks away. The coffee is great and like Sidhartha, contemplating the river of life, I am able to relax and reflect on the flow and the meaning of life while everyone else hurries to some unknown destination.

Stop signs

Imagine a city of 8 million or more people. Now imagine that that city has no stop signs. Hard to image.... but that is Ho Chi Minh City and the whole south of Vietnam. Sure they have traffic circles and the street lights in some major places but that is about it. The secret is that no one speeds. Everyone goes at the same pace. The only person I saw speeding on our whole journey through South Vietnam turned out to be an American. So watch the video to see it work.... one is from the hotel roof and the other is us just walking across the street. Once you realize that traffic never stops and you follow a local into oncoming traffic, you see and get into the rhythm of stepping off the curb, out into 20 advancing cars and 100 scooters and motorbikes, and walking slowly but steadily across the street.... is how everyone does it and it just somehow makes perfect sense...and I found it no end of fun. This marks the end of our Vietnam journey we are heading back to Thailand then off to Cambodia...

Getting down to business

When we encounter different aspects of foreign cultures we often think.... how exotic....or isn’t that an interesting way of doing things... that is in all areas except the one... the one dealing with the most basic and natural of all ... going to the bathroom... the most primal of all activities seems to cause us the most concern and discomfort....

When you first encounter the squatty potty a part of the western mind kicks in and tends to imagine the advances in our superior technology and way of life.... because who would squat when you can sit, who would wash or spray yourself off with water when you can just wipe with a piece paper....and where is the toilet paper anyway and what do you mean it is for drying yourself after washing with water and putting into the garbage not flushed away with the business at hand....

As we sit on our thrones like kings imagining the superiority of our modern advanced civilization...just think what these poor Asians imagine when they first come to our country.... Actually they are as shocked about our methods as we are of theirs... they have a hard time imagining sitting on a plastic seat on which thousands of strangers have sat on with their bare butts since it was last thoroughly cleaned... or they wonder why we would want to use a thin piece of paper, pressing their fingers against their butts to scrape off their remaining business instead of using a hose and water, and while sitting there they might imagine how can anyone eat with the same hand that they used to wiped their butt with only a thin piece of paper....

So we need to rethink our superior position for when it comes right down to it the squatty potty is not only a more natural position to assume while going to the bathroom it is a far more cleaner and practical design for a public toilet.... just be careful to not pee on your shoes...

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

Sidewalks??

It appears that in HCM city that the sidewalks are not for walking but are for the most part an extension of the work areas of the stores or a place to park you scooters. As you can see Aja was not too impressed, on going for walk just to see the sights along the sidewalks with her dad who kept stopping. As well we had to continually step out into traffic as we weaved our way around the many workers, rebuilding motors, upholstering cars making boxes and a vast number of other entertaining things to watch as we tried to move around the city...I thought it was great fun in itself meandering along the sidewalks. 'Sidewalks' journeys should be treated as an adventure in itself. So if you want to go anywhere in a hurry you should definitely stay off the sidewalks because getting places is what the scooter taxis are for.

Shiver me timbers

This is a great shop in Ho Chi Minh city that brother Thomas took us to... it is full of model boats from all era's of human navel navigation. Apparently to ensure the accuracy of each particular vessel each of the ships is made by only one family. These guys that run the shop know their stuff.... They asked us where we were from and when we said Canada they listed off all the famous old and new ships, and even corrected uncle Thom (which is almost impossible to do) about whether one of the ships was from the Atlantic or the Pacific based on the number and jib of the sails the aweigh and the backstay.... For a couple of foreign, land locked, lubber's these city boys were really impressive with their knowledge of the hundreds of boats in their shops... they could sit with any salty or wan-a-be salty like papa and knaw away the hours with sailing tales. 'Avast' says I as I realized that the only sailing terms I know appear to have come from pirate movies or Popeye. So I added little to the conversation except to add ballast weight as a delighted observer... And of course headed out of the shop with a medium sized model replica of the original bluenose for the cost 150 of the Canadian coins that she is immortalized on. If your ever in HCM city I recommend setting a bearing or charting a course for this anchorage as a relaxing, informative, entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

Chu Chi Tunnels

The Chu Chi tunnels are 250 km of narrow underground passages between villages and underground facilities that allowed the Viet Cong to appear and disappear almost like ghosts during the Vietnam war. These tunnels were all built by hand using only small hand tools. These tunnels are a badge of pride to the people, from these small tunnels they used small artillery and land mines to combat tanks and a more heavily armed forces. This area is littered with destroyed tanks and underground bunkers. I could not fit down the entrance hole and I was only in a tee-shirt not in military gear and carrying any weapons. When the soldier at the tunnel saw me taking his picture, he made a peace sign, I was moved by his simple, yet profound gesture at this tunneled and scorched piece of the earth.

in tunnel

These pictures show me in the tunnel, this was the very largest part of the tunnels, and with the flash it looks nice and bright, but the 50 m of tunnel that we crawled through were mostly in pitch dark and had been widened for us tourists. Even in the wider tunnel I found it hard enough to go the 50 m, while the average distance covered in any day by the Viet Cong was 10 km. There were over 250 km of tunnels and kitchens, meeting rooms, hospitals, sleeping quarters and much more all underground. In fact the first American army base was built over a part of the existing tunnels from the time of the French. It took the Americans a long time to figure out why they were being shot at during the night from inside their camp. The one picture of me in a crater is a hole from a single B52 bomb. The craters were used to hide the dirt from the new tunnels that were being built. The tunnel war was so successful in this area that the Americans had the rule of dropping any unused bombs into this area at the end of any bombing mission. During the war 16 thousand people lived or operated underground, only 6 thousand survived the 10 thousand day war.

In any village and even family there were those who supported the Americans and those that supported the Viet Cong so at meetings everyone wore masks so they would not know who else was there. In fact I kept a good eye on Aja while we were there, but I am sure she is on the same side as me.... or is she?

Pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26080359@N08/sets/72157623542659287/