Nam 38 years later...

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Dec 31, 2005 - 186 Photos

walking through a market

8 min cruise through HoChiMinh

HoChiMinh City and some stuff

so i spent my weekend in saigon, renamed HoChiMinh City after good ol Uncle Ho (his statue is right behind us and his picture is on EVERY Vietnamese currency denomination). now the capital of vietnam, HoChiMinh city boasts 8million people and growing fast as tons of people from the country are flocking in for more work and money.

here is a beautiful park in the city. at night, all the hip young couples come here and kiss and socialize. some nice little pubs in the area as well...

outside of hochiminh, this is what some of the coutnryside of vietnam looks like. a lot of it is gorgeous from what ive been told and pics ive seen, just not this spot in particular.

tons of motorbikes pile up at a red light (these guys usually dont stop at red lights... amazing to see it happen when it does)

some of the gang in front of a church. tj and chun's cousins, plus me...

some madness near the chinese market. tons of people selling random shit, with millions of bikes everywhere....

me at the saigon river. this river is considered to be one of the "black rivers" of HoChiMinh, so polluted that no one dares swim in it....

here is tj hanging out at the cao dai temple. some interesting religion that is a cross of buddhism, taoism, and confusciasm - i think. it wasnt all that interesting to be honest.

this little man right here is perhaps the most amazing person ive met in vietnam. i call him the breadwinner. at 3 years old, he walks around to all of the tourists and offers to sell them gum for money (how much money, we dont know since he cant say a word). the moment you drop some cash in his hand, he runs over to his mom with a grin on his face, drops the cash or change in her hand, grabs another pack of gum, and seeks out his next victim. he'll even do a michael jackson dance for you.... imagine what he would be like with an education? amazing.

cu chi tunnels and elements of the war

95% of the ground by cuchi and much of southern vietnam is clay. this explains how they wee able to make such a vast network of tunnels (over 200km worth) capable of keeping people alive for weeks at a time. some of them even had entrances under the water. here is a set of steps carved into the ground....

this is what they called a "spider hole". not used as a trap, this is how the vietkong actually got in and our of their tunnels.... i am not joking.

this is one of the many traps the vietkong used against the americans. they cover the hole siwht leaves, a poor unsuspecting recently drafted 20 year old steps on the small circular device at the top, then his foot falls and the blades go straight into his leg. it saddens me to think about whoever experienced this. some of the others were worse...

here i am inside of a recreation of the tunnels in cu chi. there was a lot of fighting here (if the picture of the US tank above didnt give you that idea), the actual tunnels were about half this size...