Adios Saigon

We have our last two days in Saigon before we have to deal with our 30 hours of travel back to the states. Time for some fun, drinking, and generally relaxing after our brutal tour. This is just an amazing city to hang out in. The people, the place and the atmosphere just make you feel so welcome. It’s organized chaos, but it’s somehow become normal to us.

We had to go and pick up our suits that we had made for us last week before we had headed north. They fit like a glove. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, we did it more for the experience, but I’m impressed. The amount of money you save having them made here, almost makes it worth coming here once a year just to get suited and booted. After the suits, we decided to just get lost in the city and see where that takes us. It was a hot and humid 95 degrees, so we had to make sure we stayed hydrated, unfortunately the first bar we went in to fill up on fluids, somehow trapped us there for 7 hours. It was a well deserved, and well need wind down, but it made for a messy afternoon.

We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning to jump on a tourist bus and head 2 hours to the Cu Chi tunnels. These are the tunnels the Viet Kong lived in when they were fighting the Americans during the war. It was crazy to see how basic these guys lived, and how they managed to beat the mighty American super power with not much more than an AK47 and some sharpened bamboo. It literally was as simple as that. We saw the crude “tiger traps” (that were pits hidden by leaves and filled with these sharpened bamboo that would impale the enemy), and we crawled through the tunnels where these people lived for a decade during the war. It was so basic, yet so complex. It was basic to the local people that knew how to navigate these dark, tiny tunnels, yet a dangerous maze for the enemy. No high tech gadgets here, just old fashioned jungle fighting skills. It was an interesting day.

We picked up a few more gifts to take back to the states, grabbed a beer and a massage from some random off the street (whilst we were enjoying the beer), a bite to eat and then went to pack.

It’s been a great trip and south east Asia will see me again soon.