Me personally, I love snow, always have, and my students were absolutely thrilled to see it all, for most of them its the only real snowfall they've ever seen. One of my fellow teachers said this was the first time she'd seen snow EVER. She lived in Egypt for the past 13 years though.
But anyway, enough about cold and snowy Korea, you all want to hear about warm and sunny Vietnam huh. Well there's too much for one post so I'll do this over a couple of days. For today I'll talk about just the first couple days of the trip itself.
My flight left at 10:30 on Saturday morning (Dec. 26th). A fast bus ride (I slept the entire 4 hours) starting at 3:30 got me to the airport with plenty of time to spare. However, going through customs (to leave, not come in, which makes no sense to me at all) dragged me into some bureaucratic BS. Apparently if I wanted to come back to Korea I had to pay for an entry visa, about 40 bucks. It was early and I was upset at the idiocy of the situation so a part of me really wanted to just leave for good and never come back. However, the part of my brain that was still asleep (lazy bastard) finally woke up and I just paid the money and left. Oh well, its another stamp in my passport so its not a total loss.
For some reason I couldn't sleep on the flight but the lady next to me (who didn't say a word when I said hello) decided to use my shoulder as a pillow for the 5 hour flight. She didn't even say "thank you" when she woke. All she did was give me a dirty look like I had fallen asleep on her shoulder. Seriously, what the hell?
But my day was rapidly improving because when I stepped off the plane it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Saigon and it was already 37 degrees C (98 degrees F) and the sun was shining right into my eyes, it was like walking into a wall but it felt great. My mood must have been infectious because my taxi driver was awesome. It was a 20 minute ride to my hostel but we talked the whole way. Apparently he'd been taught English by US soldiers before the fall of Saigon back in 1975. He kept talking about how much he loved America and even turned down my tip when I gave him a few extra bucks. Definitely a good omen.
Walking around downtown Saigon reminded me so much of China. The touts were everywhere, selling me everything from books to hammocks. One guy offered to string up his hammock right next to the main street to demonstrate how great it was. That's a hell of a salesman right there.
Most of the rest of the first day I just met people in my hostel and did some shopping. One of the biggest reasons I went to Vietnam was because they have books everywhere for cheap. Gumi doesn't have any English-language bookstores so I needed to stock up. As it is, I bought about 40 books total (getting them to Korea was a pain in the neck and the back). I won't be needing anymore for a while.
The next day I took an all day tour of the Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels with a new friend from India named Vikas, that I met in the hostel.
After that we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels.
During the American-Vietnamese War the Vietcong (Vietnamese Communists) were so outnumbered and outgunned by US forces that they had to build extremely elaborate tunnel systems underground in order to survive. Most of the tunnels were destroyed after the war when there was no longer a need but the Cu Chi system right outside Siagon has survived. I didn't get a chance to see this last time so I wanted to check it out.
As you can see from the mock-up the tunnel system was huge. And the weird part is that it was set up within 5 miles of a major US base. They never found it, during the entire war.
During the day, I got to crawl through the tunnels.
I also got to fire an AK-47 at their rifle range.
Now I love traveling through Vietnam, its one of my favorite places to visit, but there is one thing in particular that I hate. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 a lot of tourist places were set up, just like Cu Chi. However when they were set up I don't think they were expecting any Americans to ever see them. Almost all of the old war sites are absolutely laced with propaganda. At Cu Chi it was no different, we actually had to sit through a 20 minute video from 1968 where they basically blast America and all Americans with some severe, rhetorical nonsense. I was the only American in our group (that I knew of) so everyone was asking me what I thought of it. Honestly, I've seen plenty of anti-American propaganda both in Vietnam and China (and some in the US, but that's a different story) so as much as I hate it, I'm used to it.
The part that I really hated is how almost none of them will talk about their own faults and won't even acknowledge that both sides were guilty of a great many sins. At least in America we acknowledge when we've done some rather f-ed up things in the past. Yeah it takes us a while to own up but we do. North Vietnam was guilty of quite a few war crimes but they're all swept under the rug.
Now I'm not saying the US has never committed any atrocities in its past, we've committed many. I'm a military historian, I know first hand some of the things we've done. But that's just it, I KNOW about them. So many young Vietnamese don't have any idea about the things the North did to the South (and to the Americans and their allies) during the war. Its insulting to me, my country, all the countries that fought with us (there were quite a few actually), and to all the Vietnamese people. I've always hated it when countries try to cover up the messy stuff from their own histories.
Sorry, had to rant a bit, its a sore subject for me.
Anyway, after Cu Chi we headed back and I spent most of the night drinking and dancing with some other backpackers. All in all it was a great day, and a great start of my trip.
That's all for today, tomorrow I'll talk about the next few days.
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